New York Is a Techie Kind of Town
Few in this town will be surprised by the conclusions of the study (reported by Adrianne Jeffries in The Verge) “Building a Digital City: the Growth and Impact of New York City’s Tech / Information Sector”. It states that tech is now the second largest private sector contributor, after financial services, to the New York City economy. Considering the prominent presence of media, fashion, entertainment, trade and manufacturing firms, this is an achievement; and while article’s headline, “Watch out, Wall Street” is a little hyperbolic, given that the local finance sector is declining in the face of a daunting array of challenges, tech could indeed eventually move into the lead.
The growth of tech in this city, in case it’s not obvious, isn’t so much the growth of IT departments in large corporations (although this is hard to track, owing to trends like decentralization and the cloud), but the thriving startup scene. Notwithstanding that it was funded by the mayor’s foundation so boosterism is to be expected, there have been plenty of indications that the city’s tech workers are less and less likely to be found in corporate IT departments: the quantity of TechCrunch articles with a New York dateline about startups and venture capital; the expanding schedule of startup-themed meetups, the success of New York companies like Gilt, Fab, Ideeli, AppNexus, LinkedIn, The Ladders, Kickstarter, Etsy, ZocDoc, Shutterstock, Makerbot, Digg, Gawker, Buzzfeed… The number of technologists who never put on a tie and hide out in former warehouse spaces in Soho, the Lower East Side, Dumbo, Williamsburg and Hunters Point has gone from anecdotal observation to a documented scene of people and places. Granted this aspect of the report obviously slices the data a little differently than the Bureau of Labour Statistics’ recent report on New York City, but the presence of tech within other industries obscures its role in the economy so a report like this that attempts to detangle it is useful.
Happy as I would be to let tech take credit for the city’s economic recovery from the recession, it has to be said that this is likely as much due to the strength of a strongly diversified economy in which reside the leaders, and often headquarters, of many top firms from a variety of industries. Add to this a population that is diverse, skilled, educated and motivated, plus a real estate market that resists collapse like an anti-puncture tire, and you’ve got an economic environment that is resistant to the vagrant fortunes of any single industry.
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