00:00I do want to start off here with Wall Street specifically, given the decades that you spent
00:05there. That has been financially one of the main drivers of this city. One of our Bloomberg
00:10Opinion columnists has some great data out showing just the attrition that we've seen in that
00:15industry and the idea that some of the new industries that have moved in don't necessarily
00:19carry the same high net worth individuals that we saw in Wall Street. And I am curious as to
00:25where you think the balance is and how Mamdani can actually address that. That's a very big
00:31question. So let me start at the beginning, if I may. The first mayor to recognize this as the trend
00:39was, in fact, Michael Bloomberg. When he became mayor several years ago, he basically saw perhaps
00:46before anybody else given his role on Wall Street that the financial community was changing. The role
00:53of computers, changes in regulation, changes in competition, all meant that growth in terms
01:01of jobs in the financial services community was likely to erode somewhat. And furthermore,
01:07that they would be out migration from the city as several communities, as several companies
01:12would decide to put their workers in other locations. What did he do as mayor? He identified
01:20several industries that he thought could grow and could do a few things. Obviously, job growth and
01:28also income support. Now, when we talk about the jobs that replace financial services, we have to
01:36recognize that there's something else happening in the city as well. And that is, as Michael Bloomberg
01:43identified, there was a need, and this is something that Mr. Mamdani has identified, is there's a need
01:49for jobs for people who are not at that high end of the income spectrum, who are not at the highest end
01:56of the educational spectrum. What we began to see under the Bloomberg administration was a focus on good
02:03policing and on keeping the streets safe and clean. And the idea was to build a very strong tourism industry.
02:11And before the pandemic, we were up to about 60 million visitors a year in New York City, an enormous source of
02:19jobs, an enormous source of income coming into the city as well. What do we look at now? Well, something else that
02:28happened under the Bloomberg administration was a focus on high tech. Yeah, there was this recognition that for a city that had
02:36terrific universities and a city that was the heart of the financial community, we were, in fact, underplaying our potential
02:44role in high tech. Among the things that the Bloomberg administration did was to create a brand new university right in the heart of the
02:54city called Cornell Tech. Yeah. And the idea was to be a magnet for the best graduate students around the country and the world to focus in on high
03:05tech. And in fact, right now, Cornell Tech is one of the leaders in things like AI and in a number of other important
03:13categories that will create jobs and income going forward. And by the way, Cornell Tech has already created hundreds of new
03:22companies for the city of New York. Absolutely, too. And just a reminder to our viewers, if it's not obvious, Michael Bloomberg, of course, is the founder and owner of the parent company of the network you're watching right now.
03:33There's our disclaimer, of course, also former mayor for 12 years. And now, you know, he's been gone for some time.
03:39Abby, we had eight years of Bill de Blasio, four years of Eric Adams, and now at least four years of Zoran Mamdani.
03:47I am curious about how he can continue that diversification of the local economy. Do you think it will be a tech focus or, as you just kind of alluded to,
03:57more focus on some of those middle income and lower income services and manufacturing jobs?
04:04I'm not quite sure what Mr. Mamdani will do as he governs the city. We all know what he campaigned on.
04:12I would urge everyone involved to focus in not just on how you slice up the pie, but growing the pie.
04:20And I think that in the city of New York, you take advantage of the great university systems, number one.
04:27Number two, the fact that New York is a magnet for incoming individuals, migrants into the city and the country, and also capital flows.
04:38You know, two thirds of the working PhDs in the United States in categories like medical research and also engineering and applied sciences, they are immigrants, not the children of immigrants.
04:52But these PhD, working PhDs in the United States are themselves immigrants. New York City is the number one place where they come when they arrive in the country.
05:05Right. And so I think to take advantage of this strength is something that a Mamdani administration should be looking at, number one.
05:14Number two, I think they should be taking advantage of the strong universities that we have in the city and in the suburban areas around the city as well.
05:24And number three, the workforce. We have some terrific people at all ends of the income and education spectrum and to focus in, in many cases, on what can be done to enhance the job opportunities for people in the middle income and lower.
05:41Because I think that will help deal with the affordability crisis that he identified.
05:47You know, affordability is not just a function of the price of things.
05:51It's how much can you afford, which is also a function of how much do you earn.
05:56Well, Abby, we only have a couple minutes left with you.
05:59So I do want to broaden this conversation to the national workforce, because you're certainly starting to see some concerns there when it comes to the pace of job creation slowing down.
06:08Maybe some signs out there, certainly in the challenger data this morning, that job cuts are picking up.
06:13But when you take a look at the balance of things right now, I wonder, you know, if you see a bigger problem when it comes to demand for labor or supply of labor,
06:24when you think about some of the immigration policies of the Trump administration.
06:29We certainly are running into issues having to do with the supply of labor, but that feeds into the demand of labor as well.
06:38What we know, of course, is that the data that we're seeing from private sources is not nearly as robust as we would be getting ordinarily from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
06:49But we'll have to do the best we can with that limited data information.
06:54And what it does show is that larger companies are now beginning to say they're not hiring very much.
07:02What we're not seeing is what's happening at the smaller company level.
07:08And there is some anecdotal information suggesting that that's where people are losing their jobs.
07:15Now, is this a function of tariffs?
07:17I don't know.
07:18But clearly it's something where we are.
07:21I have to use the expression others have used, and that is we're flying blind a little bit right now in terms of that information.
07:28With regard to your question about immigrants, before the pandemic, 60 percent of the increase in the U.S. labor force in the 10 years prior to the start of the pandemic were immigrants to the United States.
07:42And let's keep in mind that so many of them were at the upper end of the education spectrum, not just those Ph.D.s I mentioned before, but many people coming into the United States with master's degrees and a number of professional degrees as well.
07:58Medical research and medical practices in the United States rely very often on nurses and doctors who have been trained outside the United States and are looking for opportunities to work here.
08:12Right. Well, Abby, we have just over a minute left.
08:14And I do want to bring this conversation to the stock market because you're looking at an S&P 500 that's up double digits year to date.
08:21And certainly there's a lot of optimism priced into the big benchmark right now.
08:26When you think about some of the concerns percolating in the economy, in the labor market, how does that possibly get expressed in the equity markets as we head into year end?
08:35Well, you've already asked some of the economic related questions.
08:39Some of the market specific questions have to do with the concentration.
08:44We've talked about this before, where the weightings of certain companies have continued to grow and grow, which means that the vulnerability to those companies is enhanced if they have disappointments.
08:58Of course, the opportunity in those companies is enhanced if they do well.
09:02And when we take a look, for example, at how companies are reporting, and I was interested to listen to some of the very significant aftermarket comments that you made just a few minutes ago,
09:17just the very sharp responses on the downside when companies disappoint.
09:22When you have strong, excuse me, when you have high full valuations in the equity market, there's no cushion for error.
09:31There's no margin for a mistake.
09:33And I think that investors right now need to be careful in that regard.
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