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July 8, 2008

Brooklyn, For Richer or Poorer

The CityFacts2008 section of Crain's is full of all sorts of interesting info, like the chart above, which shows how wages stack up borough-by-borough for the five-year period that ended in 2006. Meanwhile, even though wages grew for residents of all the boroughs between 2005 and 2006, the rate of growth for Brooklyn earners, 6.2 percent, was the second-lowest in the city after the Bronx (5.1 percent) and way behind the 9.9 percent rise in Manhattan. We all need the extra dollars: The magazine's consumer price index shows big increases in New York-area (includes the whole region) utilities, food and transportation costs over the past few years. One area showed a smaller rise in cost than most, though: Between 2006 and 2007, housing costs in the region were only up 2.6 percent, as compared to the 4 to 5 percent increases recorded in the few years prior.
CityFacts2008 [Crain's]
Graphic from Crain's.

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Comments

re: cost of living, i always find it ironic that staples like milk cost more in the ghetto. as if the people there didn't have it bad enough.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 9:30 AM

Note: These are AVERAGE figures, which in Manhattan would be pulled high by billionaires and millionaires. (For example: Put three nuns and Bill Gates in a room and average wealth is $15 billion, or Bill Gates' wealth divided by four.)

MEDIAN income figures (the mid points across households and closer to reality for most working stiffs), would be much lower in Manhattan (where they're in the $50,000/$60,000 range, last I heard, only somewhat above the national median).

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 9:47 AM

Once again, NYC leads the country in the race to levels of inequality once seen only in Latin America and the USSR. Is our economy going to tank like Argentina too?

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 10:12 AM

10:12 WTF are you talking about? Your rent is past due.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 10:27 AM

any salary increase in the 10-20% range has been eaten by inflation

the serfs and the waelthy welcome to nyc 2008

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 10:39 AM

10:12am

How pathetic that losers blame those that are doing just fine for their failures. If only those low-life losers listened to the old story "THE ANT AND THE CRICKET".

This also reinforces why Brooklyn has so many nimbys and losers that grew up here. My co-worker was born in Bensonhurst and he hasn't gone back there in 4 years. His old friends and family think anyone with a college degree is stuck-up. How lame is that. Brooklyn crab mentality.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 10:43 AM

"The magazine's consumer price index shows big increases in New York-area (includes the whole region) utilities, food and transportation costs over the past few years"

How about gone parabolic? Inflation is off the charts now and I hope the Asshats are paying attention!

Folks there are some serious market dislocation going on. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac stories are huge. The problem here is that they need their stock price to be at a certain level because their stock prices is a asset. Fannie and Freddie are the 7 and 12 largest respectfully corporations is the world! they are market share into the 100's of billions of dollars. May GOD help us.

Remember I told you are Bank insolvency? Well some of those nuclear bombs are ready to go off.

Small Banks' Reckoning Day Is Coming

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121494953423420859.html

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., $45.4 billion of the $631.8 billion in construction loans outstanding at the end of the first quarter were delinquent.

631 Billion!!!!!! I wonder where that money went to? I know, I know, building CONDO"S!! RIP Mutant Real Estate Bubble....

The What

Someday this war is gonna end...

Posted by: what at July 8, 2008 11:04 AM

Time the renter class learned an important lesson about life.

126. THE ANT AND THE CRICKET
Perry 373 (Syntipas 43)

During the wintertime, an ant was living off the grain that he had stored up for himself during the summer. The cricket came to the ant and asked him to share some of his grain. The ant said to the cricket, 'And what were you doing all summer long, since you weren't gathering grain to eat?' The cricket replied, 'Because I was busy singing I didn't have time for the harvest.' The ant laughed at the cricket's reply, and hid his heaps of grain deeper in the ground. 'Since you sang like a fool in the summer,' said the ant, 'you better be prepared to dance the winter away!'

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 11:06 AM

Is this wages of people who Live or is it Work in each borough.
Big difference and looks more like Works
(since Staten Island is less than Bronx) -
high proportion of low paying retail,etc in residential areas.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 11:22 AM

bxgrl brings the numbers for brooklyn way down. At least she doesn't pay for rent or food, like a normal adult.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 11:32 AM

"These are AVERAGE figures, which in Manhattan would be pulled high by billionaires and millionaires."

And the numbers for brooklyn are pulled way down by all the welfare collectors in the projects who don't earn anything at all.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 11:37 AM

The chart pictured does seem to be showing wages of jobs located in those boroughs. There is another chart showing per-capita incomes in each borough.

Posted by: MadameX at July 8, 2008 11:37 AM

To the What. You forgot to mention IndyMac bank, which is a complete disaster in the making. Toss in Citi and Bank of America and we have a real sh*tstorm a-brewing.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 12:24 PM

Even a bunch of people making $0 income can't bring down an average nearly as much as a single person making $20 million can bring it up.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 12:28 PM

11:37 (#1) = Bitter Wage Slave

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 12:34 PM

Actually, US work hours are way up. We are a nation of ants, not crickets. Work harder than any of the other OECD countries except Japan (and we've almost caught up with them). We just live worse -- longer workweeks, shorter vacations, later retirement, less family leave, less support for schools, less support for universities and, to top it all off, lower salaries for people in the middle half.

The median wage is lower, after inflation, than it was a generation ago. People are maintaining their lifestyles, to the extent they are, by working more hours: two income families today can live almost as well as a one income family in the mid 1960s.

Only the professionals have managed to improve their incomes at what the last generation thought of as a normal rate. All the rest of the economic growth of the last 3 decades -- and there has been quite a lot of growth -- has gone to the very top. Some to the top 1%, more to the top 1/10%, and so one.

It has little to do with envy or blaming people who work harder. The super rich work hard, at least the half of them who didn't inherit their wealth, but that's not why they are rich.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 2:10 PM

Not ants. Ants work together for each other. Sheep. Working for the shepherd.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 2:23 PM

The last two posters are Communists, eh, I mean Terrorists. Don't listen to them. Everything is fine. Keep consuming. Don't ask questions and vote Republican.

Posted by: guest at July 8, 2008 3:02 PM

"To the What. You forgot to mention IndyMac bank, which is a complete disaster in the making. Toss in Citi and Bank of America and we have a real sh*tstorm a-brewing."

Nope that's the walk in the park. Wait until Citibank, WAMU and Wachovia implodes! There is a real shit storm coming!