{"id":337847,"date":"2026-09-04T09:06:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T09:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/337847\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T09:06:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T09:06:32","slug":"nycs-rich-grow-richer-even-as-wages-increase-for-low-earners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/337847\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC’s Rich Grow Richer, Even As Wages Increase for Low Earners"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Big Apple is getting more unequal: A new report from New York City Comptroller Mark Levine found that income inequality worsened in the city from 2019 to 2024.<\/p>\n

That’s not entirely unexpected. The country’s financial capital has long had a wealth gap between its Wall Street bigwigs and everyday workers, and over the past few years, millionaires have flocked back<\/a> into the city, as lower earners have migrated out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the New York metro area’s lowest earners haven’t taken a pay cut: Wage and salary inequality only very slightly increased during that same period, part of a national trend. Pay grew the fastest for traditionally lower-wage positions \u2014 like food preparation and healthcare support \u2014 while higher-paying professions like management and legal didn’t see as robust growth.<\/p>\n

Even so, the rich are still getting richer faster. In 2024, over 60% of the city’s total income went to the top 10% of earners, and the top 1% alone got 37% of all income in the city. And, from 2019 to 2024, inequality has been widening \u2014 real income has fallen during that time for the bottom 90%, while it’s grown 16.2% for the top 1% of earners.<\/p>\n

The income unevenness stems from how different New Yorkers earn their income. Lower-paid workers traditionally rely on their weekly salaries as a main source of income. Higher-income residents saw their incomes grow because they came from non-wage sources \u2014 things like rental income, businesses they own, and gains from financial investments. In 2024, the top 10% made over 50% of their income from those sources.<\/p>\n

\"Grouped<\/p>\n

That’s increasingly been the case nationwide, and part of why many left-leaning politicians are calling to tax the rich: Everyday workers pay income taxes on their salaries, which make up the bulk of their incomes, but the non-wage assets keeping higher-earners afloat are often federally taxed at preferential rates.<\/p>\n

In New York, though, that income growth among the highest earners is a key part of the tax base \u2014 and has become a target for lawmakers. Already, around 46% of all income tax<\/a> in the city is paid by the top 1% \u2014 meaning that those higher-earners are crucial to funding city services.<\/p>\n

It’s part of a catch-22 that policymakers like Mayor Zohran Mamdani are navigating. After all, the first substantive move on taxes from the city and state was a pied-\u00e0-terre tax, specifically targeted at higher earners who own property in the city, but don’t pay taxes there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Big Apple is getting more unequal: A new report from New York City Comptroller Mark Levine found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1533,262,126888,126894,126895,16170,10868,126890,126889,126892,9,24,56,63,65,64,3039,126891,126893,41968],"class_list":["post-337847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-business-insider","tag-city","tag-earner","tag-everyday-worker","tag-higher-income-resident","tag-income","tag-income-inequality","tag-income-taxis","tag-low-earner","tag-main-source","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-part","tag-pay-cut","tag-salary-inequality","tag-wage-increase"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}