Long Island’s Lost Decade
Recession effects linger as region emerges from financial meltdown.
A decade since the recession, Long Island has moved on and rebounded. Many people are earning more and the region has generated many jobs. But the recession is far from in the rear view mirror for many others. The Long Island Index for 2018, produced and released by the Rauch Foundation, tells a story of an economy only now returning to pre-recession levels. For some Long Islanders, this has been, economically, a lost decade. Average wages overall on Long Island are roughly the same as they were in 2008 in constant dollars in one potentially shocking statistic and other types of growth often only just returned to where things were a decade ago.
“I knew we were in a stagnant phase, but I am surprised,” said Nancy Rauch Douzinas, president of the Rauch Foundation. “I think the changes we have to make are structural, big and difficult.” Long Island’s assets remain the same: a robust educational system, proximity to New York City, tech and financial firms, research and hard workers as well as beaches, golf courses and more. But the region’s economy took hard hits from the dot.com bubble’s burst, 9/11, Superstorm Sandy and a mortgage and stock meltdown. “Long Island has underperformed the national economy in the first part of the 21st century,” according to the Long Island Index report. Long Island’s $194 billion economy has been expanding by an average of 1.2 percent per year since 2000, slower than the nation’s 1.6 percent, according to the report. So how are we doing?