WEEKLY WORKATHON

New York edition 3 December 2024

Hallo from appropriately named Gotham Coffee downtown in Manhattan where i’m watching the early morning work crowd in the creative industries of this district go about their business (first things first: they all want oat milk in their coffee).

Traffic, Wages - and Christmas

The big news work wise here is that the minimum wage will go up to $16.00 per hour in January in New York, Staten Island and nearby suburb Westchester which represents a near doubling in a decade.

Now on the plus side this is also significantly more than the federally mandated minimum of just over 7 bucks a hour. And it brings NYC close to the top of the league table for minimum wage state by state: The District of Columbia is €17.00.

However: you sure do need the money in this town: it’s ruinously expensive. That yellow cab shooting by cost me €29.00 dollars including tip for a 15 minute early morning no-traffic ride.

For the actual poor rather than feel-the-pinch business travellers (clearly not the same) poverty is soaring here as a report from the appropriately named Robin Hood study shows: https://robinhood.org/research/ with a separate bit of data showing that more than half of New York tenants face “rent burdens”.

This photograph was taken right next to the first building Donald Trump ever developed in Manhattan, in the extraordinary lavish district around Grand Central Station and I'm sure that it’s no accident that the minimum wages go up after Christmas and not before as this is when huge volumes of temporary staff are hired to deal with what my cab driver called “the bumper to bumper time between when they turn on the Christmas lights this week in Times Square and 4th January”.

What about Work in General?

Well, other than the almost touching conversation I overheard in iconic Jewish deli Zabar’s in which a GenZ from out of town regaled her friend with stories about how work was triggering her PTSD - a narrative that work is your problem not your solution persists - the work ethic in America remains what I call AWH: Always Wait for the Holidays.

Americans don’t love their work in general and they don’t expect to. Work pays them to live and to take holidays which is why Thanksgiving, despite Elon Musk is gonna remain a federal holiday when everything shuts down and why Deloitte forecasts that the average American will spend $1,778 this holiday season - https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/retail-distribution/holiday-retail-sales-consumer-survey.html - and also why the FT notes that “President Trump will inherit a booming economy when he enters the White House in January”.

Going to Work

I'm actually taking a short trip later today on the Amtrak to Baltimore - a city which houses the most beautiful Museum of Industry - which is hosting the aptly named Going to Work conference which I have been invited to.

I did my bit for the US economy yesterday by buying this nifty little piece of luggage in the half price “Cyber Monday” sale at - where else? - Bloomingdale’s.

More soon. Meanwhile do send me any stories or news about work from your neck of the woods.

Julia