Businesses fleeing New York for Red states.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is said today is Paul Zuber, the senior vice president of the Business Council of the State of New York. And there’s new budgets out. The New York State has has done their budget, the governor has and and the Mayor of New York has done his budget. So let’s get an update from Paul Zuber. Paul, what say you today?

0:23 Speaker 2 What I What I say today is, uh, you know, there are some positives with with both budgets. I was. I commend Governor Hokol for holding the line on taxes. I commend her for finally realizing there’s a problem with retail theft. I commend her for realizing that there’s a problem with affordability in New York, in New York State.

0:47 But I but I think one of the things that everybody’s missing here is there’s there has been a serious outmigration of people from New York State. And although the Governor’s budget has done some good things, I don’t think it goes far enough to deal with the troubling signs that we’re seeing without migration. Just to kind of give

1:10 everybody who’s listening a little bit of context, since twenty nineteen, it’s estimated that there’s been a net decline of five hundred and forty five thousand and one hundred and seventy residents from New York. Of those, three hundred and fifty five, over three hundred and fifty five thousand have come from the City of New York, where people have just just

1:33 left the state, you know, And I think when we talk about affordability, that’s great. But what we have to realize now is we’re in a competition. That’s what we’re not realizing. We’re in a competition with other states like never before because of the changes in how businesses do business right, you know, because of Zoom, because of things

1:56 like that, we don’t have to be in the state. Other states offered just as much entertainment and cultural activities as New York does. So until we realize that we’re in an out and out competition, I don’t think we’re doing enough to stop that out migration because in that competition, yes, affordability is important. Housing is important. If you live in

2:18 upstate New York, property taxes are through the roof. You can’t buy a house, you can’t buy a house on Long Island. But you know, added under that is infrastructure, energy costs, food costs, all those things go into it, and we are in a full fledged competition. And the last thing I’ll say to that is, you know, a

2:39 lot of these politicians today is particularly in New York, they like to point to California when it comes to all these new and wonderful different pieces of legislation that they’re doing. But you know, our legate officials also have to remember California is a completely different state in New York.

2:57 Why is it completely different because geographically it’s completely different. If you leave California, although there has been a large out migration in California, it’s much harder to leave because where do you go, Maybe Colorado, maybe Washington, sort of Nevada.

3:11 You know, people have been moving to Texas. But in New York, we’re competing with Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida because all of those are easily accessible by businesses and you know New Yorkers. So I think that there’s a lot of positives in the budget, but I do

3:35 think that we’re failing to understand that this is a full fledged competition now and it has more to do, and affordability is just a portion of what we have to do now.

3:46 Speaker 1 A lot of you know, there’s number of what did you have? Five hundred thousand.

3:52 Speaker 2 Yeah, it’s estimated that over five hundred and forty five thousand people I’ve left New York since since twenty and nineteen even I’m not even going just slightly before that, but that’s around the number since twenty nineteen.

4:06 Speaker 1 So how many have moved in? There? Is there a debit credit number? I mean X amount of moved.

4:12 Speaker 2 I don’t have it. I don’t have the debit credit number in front of me. But it hasn’t it hasn’t kept pace. Let’s put it that way, and I’ll give you a perfect example. The financial services in New York State.

4:27 Although it only makes up five percent of our employment of employees in the state, financial services industry makes up sixteen percent of New York State’s gross domestic product. Over the last several years, the United States has seen a uptick in financial services jobs, well over around three hundred thousand new jobs in the financial services industry, while other

4:50 places like Florida and North Carolina have seen an incredible uptick in the number of financial services jobs that have been created in their state. New York has remained for and slightly a flight dip. So we’re not even We’re not even keeping our we’re not even growing Our fundamental are one of our biggest industries, one of our biggest

5:12 money makers, you know, employees who make up the majority of our tax base. So so I think the problem is that again we’re in these competition with these other states, and we have to realize that it’s a lot different than it was before. There’s a bill out there that by Assemblymen Santa Barbara who’s an upstate assemblyman, and Senator

5:36 Jamis Todisco who’s an upstate senator, to form a commission to look at out migration and to work with people and try to figure out what it is that we can do the stemnus And until people start talking a bit, putting business in a room along with a bunch of other people to figure out what is causing this, I

5:53 don’t think we’re ever really going to truly get to the problem, you know, because the problem is the problem is across the board. It’s not even just businesses. If you’re a young entrepreneur. If you’re a young minority entrepreneur, why would you start a business in New York would Hi workers? I tell you, I mean you want to go?

6:11 Speaker 1 You ready to go to Tennessee or North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.

6:16 Speaker 2 In Georgia, you saw you know John. There was an article in the New York Times that said why African Americans are leaving New York City And what they found was most African Americans are going to Georgia and going to Atlanta. Why because there’s opportunity. If you’re young and you want to be an entrepreneur, you have a better

6:33 shot in Atlanta than you’re doing in New York. And that shouldn’t be the case. I mean, we should be winning the competition. We’re supposed to be the financial capital of the world, and it’s become a real problem. And I commend the governor for again not raising taxes and doing those things. But we have to look at cutting taxes.

6:50 We have to look at figuring out how to how to improve our workforce. We have to figure out all the things that encompass a competition with another state, because until we do that, we’re gonna keep losing people. And we keep losing people, we lose tax revenue, right, and then all the programs that we all want to fund

7:10 will become impossible to fund. And it’s already very clear, and a lot of estimates are the New York could possibly lose three congressional seats in the coming years and we lose political power. So it’s a very concerning thing, and it’s a very concerning thing for the business community as a whole, because we’re very worried about what New

7:29 York will look like ten years from now.

7:32 Speaker 1 Absolutely correct. Well, Paul, thank you for reporting in And I hope all our listeners are listening, and I hope our politicians are listening, because New York will be on the slide if we don’t fix it soon.

7:49 Speaker 2 Well, if they’re not listening, I’m gonna go see them. I’m gonna see them next week in allvan and I’ll make sure they start listening.

7:54 Speaker 1 Thank you, Paul Zuber, New York State Food Console and no New York State, New York State Business Counsel. Thank you so much.

8:03 Speaker 2 Thank you, John, I appreciate it. Thank you. By bye.