The Big Apple is growing increasingly unequal: A new report from New York City Comptroller Mark Levine shows that income inequality in the city worsened between 2019 and 2024.
That is not entirely unexpected. The nation’s financial capital has long had a wealth gap between Wall Street executives and rank-and-file workers, and in recent years millionaires have flowed back into town, like lower incomes have emigrated.
But the lowest earners in the New York metro region have not suffered a pay cut: Wage and salary inequality has increased only very slightly over the same period, part of a national trend. Wages rose the fastest for traditionally lower-wage positions – such as food preparation and healthcare – while higher-paying occupations such as management and legal professions did not see robust growth.
Yet the rich are still getting richer faster. By 2024, more than 60% of the city’s total income went to the top 10% of earners, and the top 1% alone received 37% of all income in the city. And between 2019 and 2024, inequality has widened: real income fell for the bottom 90% over that period, while it grew by 16.2% for the top 1% of earners.
Income inequality stems from the way different New Yorkers earn their income. Lower-paid workers have traditionally relied on their weekly paychecks as their main source of income. Higher-income residents saw their income grow because they came from non-wage sources – things like rental income, businesses they own and profits from financial investments. By 2024, the top 10% would earn more than 50% of their income from these sources.
That’s increasingly the case across the country, and it’s one reason many left-wing politicians are calling for taxing the wealthy: Ordinary workers pay income taxes on their salaries, which make up the bulk of their income, but the non-wage assets that keep higher earners afloat are often federally taxed at preferential rates.
In New York, however, that income growth among the highest earners has become a major part of the tax base — and a target for lawmakers. Already around 46% of all income tax in the city is paid for by the top 1% – meaning those higher earners are crucial to funding city services.
It’s part of a catch-22 that policymakers like Mayor Zohran Mamdani are working on. After all, the first substantial move on city and state taxation was a pied-à-terre tax, specifically aimed at higher income earners who own property in the city but don’t pay taxes there.
