Coronavirus Reopenings

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    As New York Reopens, It Looks for Culture to Lead the Way

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    Broadway is planning to start performances of at least three dozen shows before the end of the year, but producers do not know if there will be enough tourists — who typically make up two-thirds of the audience — to support all of them.The Metropolitan Opera is planning a September return, but only if its musicians agree to pay cuts.And New York’s vaunted nightlife scene — the dance clubs and live venues that give the city its reputation for never sleeping — has been stymied by the slow, glitchy rollout of a federal aid program that mistakenly declared some of the city’s best-known nightclub impresarios to be dead.The return of arts and entertainment is crucial to New York’s economy, and not just because it is a major industry that employed some 93,500 people before the pandemic and paid them $7.4 billion in wages, according to the state comptroller’s office. Culture is also part of the lifeblood of New York — a magnet for visitors and residents alike that will play a key role if the city is to remain vital in an era when shops are battling e-commerce, the ease of remote work has businesses rethinking the need to stay in central business districts and the exurbs are booming.“What is a city without social, cultural and creative synergies?” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo asked earlier this year in an address on the importance of the arts to the city’s recovery. “New York City is not New York without Broadway. And with Zoom, many people have learned they can do business from anywhere. Compound this situation with growing crime and homelessness and we have a national urban crisis.”When “Springsteen on Broadway” opened its doors again in June, the fans flocked back. George Etheredge for The New York TimesAnd Mayor Bill de Blasio — who could seem indifferent to the arts earlier in his tenure — has become a cultural cheerleader in the waning days of his administration, starting a $25 million program to put artists back to work, creating a Broadway vaccination site for theater industry workers and planning a “homecoming concert” in Central Park next month featuring Bruce Springsteen, Jennifer Hudson and Paul Simon to herald the city’s return.Eli Dvorkin, editorial and policy director at the Center for an Urban Future, said, “The way I look at it, there is not going to be a strong recovery for New York City without the performing arts’ leading the way.” He added, “People gravitate here because of the city’s cultural life.”There are signs of hope everywhere, as vaccinated New Yorkers re-emerge this summer. Destinations like the Whitney and the Brooklyn Museum are crowded again, although timed reservations are still required. Bruce Springsteen is playing to sold-out crowds on Broadway and Foo Fighters brought rock back to Madison Square Garden.Shakespeare in the Park and the Classical Theater of Harlem are staging contemporary adaptations of classic plays in city parks, the Park Avenue Armory, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and a number of commercial Off Broadway theaters have been presenting productions indoors, and a new outdoor amphitheater is drawing crowds for shows on Little Island, the new Hudson River venue.Haley Gibbs, 25, an administrative aide who lives in Brooklyn, said she felt the city’s pulse returning as she waited to attend “Drunk Shakespeare,” an Off Off Broadway fixture that has resumed performances in Midtown.“I feel like it’s our soul that’s been given back to us, in a way,” Gibbs said, “which is super dramatic, but it is kind of like that.”But some of the greatest tests for the city’s cultural scene lie ahead.Hunkering down — cutting staff, slashing programming — turned out to be a brutal but effective survival strategy. Arts workers faced record unemployment, and some have yet to return to work, but many businesses and organizations were able to slash expenses and wait until it was safe to reopen. Now that it’s time to start hiring and spending again, many cultural leaders are worried: Can they thrive with fewer tourists and commuters? How much will safety protocols cost? Will the donors who stepped up during the emergency stick around for a less glamorous period of rebuilding?“Next year may prove to be our most financially challenging,” said Bernie Telsey, one of the three artistic directors at MCC Theater, an Off Broadway nonprofit. “In many ways, it’s like a start-up now — it’s not just turning the lights on. Everything is a little uncertain. It’s like starting all over again.”The fall season is shaping up to be the big test. “Springsteen on Broadway” began last month, but the rest of Broadway has yet to resume: The first post-shutdown play, a drama about two existentially trapped Black men called “Pass Over,” is to start performances Aug. 4, while the first musicals are aiming for September, starting with “Hadestown” and “Waitress,” followed by war horses that include “The Lion King,” “Chicago,” “Wicked” and “Hamilton.”Many of Broadway’s biggest hits will reopen in September.George Etheredge for The New York TimesThe looming question is whether there will be enough theatergoers to support all those shows. Although there have been signs that some visitors are returning to the city, tourism is not expected to rebound to its prepandemic levels for four years. So some of the returning Broadway shows will initially start with reduced schedules — performing fewer than the customary eight shows a week — as producers gauge ticket demand.And “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” a big-budget, Tony-winning play that was staged in two parts before the pandemic, will be cut down to a single show when it returns to Broadway on Nov. 12; its producers cited “the commercial challenges faced by the theater and tourism industries emerging from the global shutdowns.”“What we need to do, which has never been done before, is open all of Broadway over a single season,” said Tali Pelman, the lead producer of “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Safety protocols have been changing rapidly, as more people get vaccinated, but there is still apprehension about moving too fast. In Australia, reopened shows have periodically been halted by lockdowns, while in England, several shows have been forced to cancel performances to comply with isolation protocols that some view as overly restrictive.“On a fundamental level, our health is at stake,” said Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of “Hamilton,” which is planning to resume performances on Broadway on Sept. 14. “You get this wrong, and we open too soon, and then we re-spike and we close again — that’s almost unthinkable.”Some presenters worry that, with fewer tourists, arts organizations will be battling one another to win the attention of New Yorkers and people from the region.The tourism drawn by Broadway is an essential part of the restaurant and bar economy in Midtown.George Etheredge for The New York TimesWill audiences return in the same numbers as prior to the pandemic is a question that producers are pondering. George Etheredge for The New York Times“There’s going to be a lot of competition for a smaller audience at the beginning, and that’s scary,” said Todd Haimes, artistic director of the Roundabout Theater Company, a nonprofit that operates three theaters on Broadway and two Off Broadway.Another looming challenge: concerns about public safety. Bystanders were struck by stray bullets during shooting incidents in Times Square in May and June, prompting Mayor de Blasio to promise additional officers to protect and reassure the public in that tourist-and-theater-dense neighborhood.The city’s tourism organization, NYC & Company, has developed a $30 million marketing campaign to draw visitors back to the city. The Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, is planning its own campaign. The Tony Awards are planning a fall special on CBS that will focus on performances in an effort to boost ticket sales. And comeback come-ons are finding their way into advertising: “We’ve been waiting for you,” “Wicked” declares in a direct mail piece.The economic stakes for the city are high. Broadway shows give work to actors and singers and dancers and ushers, but also, indirectly, to waiters and bartenders and hotel clerks and taxi drivers, who then go on to spend a portion of their paychecks on goods and services. The Broadway League says that during the 2018-2019 season Broadway generated $14.7 billion in economic activity and supported 96,900 jobs, when factoring in the direct and indirect spending of tourists who cited Broadway as a major reason for visiting the city.“We’ve pushed through a really tough time, and now you have this new variant, which is kind of scary, but I still hope we’re on the right track,” said Shane Hathaway, the co-owner of Hold Fast, a Restaurant Row bar and eatery whose website asks “Do you miss the Performing Arts?? So do we!!” “We’re already seeing a lot more tourists than last year,” Hathaway said, “and my hope is that we continue.”The Metropolitan Museum of Art on a  Saturday in July. It reopened last August on a reduced schedule and officials there say the visitor count has dropped.George Etheredge for The New York TimesAt the tourist-dependent Met Museum, attendance is back, but not all the way: it’s now open five days a week, and has drawn 10,000 people many days, while before the pandemic it was open seven days a week and averaged 14,000 daily visitors. Plus: more of the visitors now are local, and they don’t have to pay admission; the Met continues to project a $150 million revenue loss due to the pandemic.If the Met, the largest museum in the country, is struggling, that means smaller arts institutions are hurting even more, particularly those outside Manhattan, which tend to have less foot traffic and fewer big donors. The Brooklyn Academy of Music, for example, is trying to recover from a pandemic period without when it lost millions in revenue, reduced staff and had to raid its endowment to pay the bills.The city’s music scene has faced its own challenges — from the diviest bars to nightclubs to the plush Metropolitan Opera.According to a study commissioned by the mayor’s office, some 2,400 concert and entertainment venues in New York City supported nearly 20,000 jobs in 2016. But the sector has had a hard time.Many are waiting to see if they will get help from a $16 billion federal grant fund intended to preserve music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses devastated by the pandemic. But the rollout of the program, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, has been slow and bumpy. Some owners, including Michael Swier, the founder of the Bowery Ballroom and the Mercury Lounge in New York, were initially denied aid because the program mistakenly believed they were dead.Elsewhere, a music and arts space with a 1,600-person capacity in the heart of hipster Brooklyn, cut its staff from 120 people to 5 when the pandemic arrived. After the state lifted restrictions on smaller venues in June, it reopened and began hiring back some workers, but its owners fear it could take a year or two to return to profitability.The bar at Elsewhere on a July Saturday in New York.George Etheredge for The New York TimesMore party people packed in at Elsewhere.George Etheredge for The New York TimesThe club got help in the form of a $4.9 million shuttered venue grant from the federal government, which it said would be used to pay its debts — including for rent, utilities, and loans — and to fix up the space and pay staff. “Every dollar will be used just to dig ourselves out from Covid,” said one of the venue’s partners, Dhruv Chopra.And the Met Opera is still not sure if it can raise its gilded curtain in September, as planned, after the longest shutdown in its history. The company, which lost $150 million in earned revenues during the pandemic, recently struck deals to cut the pay of its choristers, soloists and stagehands. The company is now in tense negotiations with the musicians in its orchestra, who were furloughed without pay for nearly a year. If they fail to reach a deal, the Met, the largest performing arts organization in the nation, risks missing being part of the initial burst of reopening energy.Some cultural leaders are already looking past the fall, at the challenge of sustaining demand for tickets after the initial enthusiasm of reopening fades.“We have a lot of work to do to make sure that people know that we’re open,” said Thomas Schumacher, president of Disney Theatrical Productions, “to make people comfortable coming in, to keep the shows solid, and to get through the holidays and get through the winter.”Laura Zornosa contributed reporting. More

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    June Jobs Report Delivers Good News and Big Questions for Washington

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    Payrolls surged and wages climbed, both positives for President Biden and the Federal Reserve. But stagnant labor market participation highlights a key risk.Employers are hiring and wages are rising but the number of people actively working or looking for jobs remains stagnant, a phenomenon that is making it difficult for the Federal Reserve and White House to determine how much the labor market has recovered and how long the U.S. economy will continue to need hefty support.Employers added 850,000 workers to payrolls in June, a strong number that was buttressed by rising wages as employers scramble to hire to meet surging customer demand. The report gives the Biden administration encouraging talking points, and the Fed a sign that the economy is making progress toward the central bank’s full employment goal.But the fact that workers aren’t rushing back to the job market injects a note of caution into an otherwise sunny outlook. The labor force participation rate, a measure of people working or looking for jobs, has barely budged in recent months and was unchanged at 61.6 percent in June. It remains sharply down from 63.3 percent before the crisis started.The labor force participation rate did not budge.Share of the working-age population who are in the labor force (employed, unemployed but looking for work or on temporary layoff) More

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    Bruce Springsteen Is Back on Broadway. The Workers Are Coming Back, Too.

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    Broadway took its first steps back with the return of Bruce Springsteen’s show, and no one is happier than Jim Barry, an usher at the St. James Theater for 20 years.Jim Barry, masked and ready, perched at the top of the theater stairs, cupping his hands around the outstretched smartphones so he could more easily make out the seat numbers.“How you doing? Nice jacket.”“Go this way — it’s an easier walk.”“Do you need help sir? The bathroom’s right there.”It was Saturday night at the St. James Theater.Bruce Springsteen was back on the stage.Fans were back in the seats.And, 15 months after the pandemic had shut down Broadway, Barry, who has worked as an usher at the St. James for 20 years, was back at work, doling out compliments and reassurance as he steered people toward the mezzanine, the restroom, the bar.“Springsteen on Broadway” is essentially a one-man show, but its return has already brought back work for about 75 people at the St. James — not only Barry, but also another 30 ushers and ticket-takers, as well as merch sellers, bar staff, porters, cleaners, stagehands, box office workers, a pair of managers and an engineer.The return of “Springsteen on Broadway” has already brought back work for about 75 people at the St. James Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMore shows, and jobs, will return in August and September as Broadway’s 41 theaters slowly come back to life. Ultimately, a Broadway rebound promises to benefit not just theater workers but hotel clerks and bartenders and taxi drivers and workers in the many industries that rely on theater traffic, which can be considerable: in the last full season before the pandemic, 14.8 million people saw a Broadway show.Barry, a gregarious 65-year-old Staten Island grandfather, loves theater, for sure, but also depends on the job for income and basic health insurance.“This job is not for everybody, but I made it my own,” he said. Barry, a solidly built man with white hair who is often mistaken for a security officer, takes pride at being punctual, and jovial, and polite. “I can tell somebody tapping me on the back where the bathroom is, while telling somebody in front of me where their seats are, and also waving to somebody in the corner. It’s controlled insanity.”As he returned to work following the shutdown, there were a few changes to master. He had to wear a mask — they are required for employees, but not patrons — and struggled to feel comfortable making small talk through the fabric. And tickets were now all digital, which meant his signature move, which involved passing tickets behind his back as he accepted, scrutinized, and handed back the proffered stubs, was no longer useful; instead he needed to figure out how to quickly decipher all those different screen fonts.Still, he was thrilled to be back.“No matter what happens, nothing can make me feel bad, because I’m back at my house, and the Boss is at my house,” he said. “It’s where I want to be.”“No matter what happens, nothing can make me feel bad, because I’m back at my house, and the Boss is at my house,” Barry said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBarry, originally from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, took an unusual path to the theater industry. For 27 years, he had worked in banking, first as a teller, and then as a bank officer in Times Square.He saw theater, occasionally, and loved it. As a teenager he saw Danny Kaye in “Two by Two,” and later he saw “Jesus Christ Superstar.” (“I couldn’t believe it was so fantastic.”) But the production he most excitedly remembers seeing is “Grease,” at the Royale Theater; a friend got him access to walk onto the stage before the show. “It gave me the bug,” he said.So when he decided he needed to earn more money, and began looking for a second job, he reached out to one of his customers at the bank, a woman who worked in payroll at Jujamcyn Theaters, which operates five Broadway theaters, including the St. James. She asked if he’d be open to ushering.That was in 2001. The first shift he worked was at a dress rehearsal for “The Producers,” which was about to open. “You know you belong when your body just gets enveloped in euphoria,” he said.He was hooked. For years, he continued working full-time at the bank, while also working nights and weekends at the theater; in 2016 he left the bank for good, and now he works six days a week at the theater (the shifts are short — a full usher shift is 4.5 hours, but at each show half the staff gets to leave 30 minutes after curtain, which is two hours after their start time).It’s a union job, for which standard pay is $83.78 per show; Barry has the higher rank of director, so he makes about $710 a week, and supplements his income with Social Security and a small bank pension. He was kept afloat during the pandemic by unemployment; although he missed the theater, he also was glad to have more time to spend with his girlfriend.He has a bear of a commute — it can take up to two hours to get to work, depending on whether he drives or takes a bus, and how bad the traffic is. He arrives early, changes into his Jujamcyn uniform (black suit, black shirt, black tie, with a red J on the chest), and sits in a theater doorway on West 44th Street that he calls “my stoop,” enjoying coffee and a roll and greeting passers-by, sometimes posing for a picture with a passing actor.Barry has a long commute — it can take up to two hours to get to work.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlthough he loves the theater, seeing shows other than the ones he’s working is hard — he’s generally on duty when other shows are running. But he usually gets to the big ones.At his own theater, he’s seen a mix of hits and flops. With the latter, he said, “you just feel bad for everybody.” And what if he doesn’t like a show he’s working? “We have the luxury of lobbies.”There are, of course, headaches to manage — intoxicated patrons, and insistent videographers — but he prides himself on doing so with civility. For the cellphone scofflaws, whose ranks have swelled since he began, he will sometimes simply hover, which usually shames people into compliance; other times he will use a flashlight or a headshake to get someone’s attention, and once in a while he’ll say something like, “Please don’t do that. If they see you, I’m going to get in trouble.” (At “Springsteen on Broadway,” no photos or videos are allowed until the bows.)How much does Barry love being part of the business? In March, sad not to be at work for his 20th anniversary at the theater, he and his girlfriend drove into Times Square, and he posed for a photograph in front of each of the 41 Broadway theaters.“There’s that old adage — when you love what you do, you never work a day in your life,” he said. “I am so lucky — I love to make people feel good about coming to our house.” More

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    How NYC Faces a Lasting Economic Toll Even as the Coronavirus Pandemic Passes

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    Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesNew York City is beginning to rebound from the economic devastation of the pandemic.But it won’t be easy. Neighborhoods remain pockmarked by vacant commercial real estate, and the city’s unemployment rate remains almost twice the national average.While there are signs that the city is coming back to life, the path forward is anything but clear.New York Faces Lasting Economic Toll Even as Pandemic PassesThe city’s prosperity is heavily dependent on patterns of work and travel that may be irreversibly altered.Nelson D. Schwartz, Patrick McGeehan and As the national economy recovers from the pandemic and begins to take off, New York City is lagging, with changing patterns of work and travel threatening the engines that have long powered its jobs and prosperity.New York has suffered deeper job losses as a share of its work force than any other big American city. And while the country has regained two-thirds of the positions it lost after the coronavirus arrived, New York has recouped fewer than half, leaving a deficit of more than 500,000 jobs.New York City lost greatest share of jobs among 20 largest U.S. citiesThe city had an 11.8 percent decline in jobs from February 2020 to April 2021, almost three times the loss on the national level.

    Source: Center for New York City Affairs at the New SchoolTaylor JohnstonRestaurants and bars are filling up again with New Yorkers eager for a return to normal, but scars are everywhere. Boarded-up storefronts and for-lease signs dot many neighborhoods. Empty sidewalks in Midtown Manhattan make it feel like a weekend in midweek. Subway ridership on weekdays is less than half the level of two years ago.The city’s economic plight stems largely from its heavy reliance on office workers, business travelers, tourists and the service businesses catering to all of them. All eyes are on September, when many companies aim to bring their workers back to the office and Broadway fully reopens, attracting more visitors and their dollars. But even then, the rebound will be only partial.The shift toward remote work endangers thousands of businesses that serve commuters who are likely to come into the office less frequently than before the pandemic, if at all. By the end of September, the Partnership for New York City, a business advocacy group, predicts that only 62 percent of office workers will return, mostly three days a week.Restoring the city to economic health will be an imposing challenge for its next mayor, who is likely to emerge from the Democratic primary on Tuesday. The candidates have offered differing visions of how to help struggling small businesses and create jobs.“We are bouncing back, but we are nowhere near where we were in 2019,” said Barbara Byrne Denham, senior economist at Oxford Economics. “We suffered more than everyone else, so it will take a little longer to recover.”At 10.9 percent in May, the city’s unemployment rate was nearly twice the national average of 5.8 percent. In the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough, the rate is 15 percent. Workers in face-to-face sectors like restaurants and hospitality, many of whom are people of color, are still struggling.“While the recovery has probably exceeded expectations, unemployment remains staggeringly high for Black and brown individuals and historically marginalized communities,” said Jose Ortiz Jr., chief executive of the New York City Employment and Training Coalition, a work force development group.At the same time, hundreds of small businesses, which before the pandemic employed about half of the city’s work force, didn’t survive. And many that did are saddled with debt they took on to survive the downturn and owe tens of thousands of dollars in back rent.“I have a huge amount of debt to pay back because I had to borrow all over the place to stay alive,” said Robert Schwartz, the third-generation owner of Eneslow Shoes & Orthotics. He closed two of his four stores, but kept open branches on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and in Little Neck, Queens. “We’ll survive, but it’s going to be a long, slow recovery.”Office buildings in Lower Manhattan. The city depends more heavily than other places on office workers, business travelers, and the service businesses catering to all of them.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesEven if just 10 percent of Manhattan office workers begin working remotely most of the time, that translates into more than 100,000 people a day not picking up a coffee and bagel on their way to work or a drink afterward.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesEmpty sidewalks in parts of the city once filled with office workers make it feel like a weekend in midweek.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesOne crucial factor in the city’s economic trajectory, civic and business leaders say, is addressing safety concerns. Violent crime has risen since the pandemic hit — including a high-profile Times Square shooting in May that wounded two women and a 4-year-old girl — and the police have recently increased Midtown foot patrols.“The negatives of New York life are worse,” said Seth Pinsky, chief executive of the 92nd Street Y, a longtime cultural destination on the Upper East Side.“Crime is going up and the city is dirtier,” added Mr. Pinsky, who served as president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation under former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “It’s critical that we get the virtuous cycle going again.”On Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on a radio show on WNYC that the city had more police officers in the subway than at any time in the last 25 years. “We want to really encourage people back, to protect everyone,” he said.Nonetheless, worries about crime are frequently cited by workers who have returned. “There are questions from employees about safety in the city and increased concern,” said Jonathan Gray, president of the financial behemoth Blackstone. “My hope is that as the city fills up there will be less of that.”New York is certainly feeling less deserted than it did a few months ago. Nearly 195,000 pedestrians strolled through Times Square on June 13, more than twice the typical number in the bleak winter days when the coronavirus was raging. That’s a long way from the 365,000 who passed through daily before the pandemic, but the totals are edging higher, according to Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, a nonprofit group that promotes local businesses and the neighborhood.Change in foot traffic in New York City, by type of location

    Foot traffic data was aggregated and anonymized by Foursquare from smartphone apps that shared location data. Data as of June 18, 2021.Source: FoursquareTaylor JohnstonWhen Mr. Gray returned to Blackstone’s Midtown headquarters last summer, there were just 16 other people spread over 19 floors. Today, there are more than 1,600, and Blackstone is asking all employees who have been vaccinated to return.“It’s gone from feeling super lonely and now it’s feeling pretty normal,” Mr. Gray added.Wall Street and the banking sector are pillars of the city’s economy, and they have been among the most aggressive industries in prodding employees to go back to the office. James Gorman, the chief executive of Morgan Stanley, told investors and analysts this month that “if you want to get paid in New York, you need to be in New York.”Many firms, including Blackstone and Morgan Stanley, have huge real estate holdings or loans to the industry, so there is more than civic pride in their push to get workers to return. Technology companies like Facebook and Google are increasingly important employers as well as major commercial tenants, and they have been increasing their office space. But they have been more flexible about letting employees continue to work remotely.Google, which has 11,000 employees in New York and plans to add 3,000 in the next few years, intends to return to its offices in West Chelsea in September, but workers will only be required to come in three days a week. The company has also said up to 20 percent of its staff can apply to work remotely full time.The decision by even a small slice of employees at Google and other companies to stay home part or all of the week could have a significant economic impact.Even if just 10 percent of Manhattan office workers begin working remotely most of the time, that translates into more than 100,000 people a day not picking up a coffee and bagel on their way to work or a drink afterward, said James Parrott, an economist with the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School.“I expect a lot of people will return, but not all of them,” he said. “We might lose some neighborhood businesses as a result.”The absence of white-collar workers hurts people like Danuta Klosinski, 60, who had been cleaning office buildings in Manhattan for 20 years. She is one of more than about 3,000 office cleaners who remain out of work, according to Denis Johnston, a vice president of their union, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union.Ms. Klosinski, who lives in Brooklyn, said that she had been furloughed twice since last spring and that she had been idle since November. She said she feared that if she were not recalled by September, she would lose the health insurance that covers her husband, who suffered a stroke and a heart attack.“I’m worried about losing everything,” she said.Also weighing on the city’s outlook is the decline in visits by tourists, who are venturing back in dribbles, not in droves.Performers in Times Square, which saw nearly 195,000 pedestrians pass through on a recent day. That’s a long way from the 365,000 who passed through daily before the pandemic.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesAn ice cream vendor waited for customers at Bryant Park in Midtown.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesPassengers aboard a cruise to the Statue of Liberty. City officials expect that it will take at least a few years to draw as many visitors as in 2019.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesIn 2019, New York welcomed over 66 million out-of-towners, and they spent more than $45 billion in hotels, restaurants, shops and theaters. City officials expect that it will take years to draw so many visitors again, especially the bigger-spending foreign tourists and business travelers on expense accounts.Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, said domestic tourism was rebounding faster than she had expected. “The local population is out and about and happy to be so,” Ms. Futter said. But the scarcity of international visitors “is going to tamp down the pace of recovery,” she said.That lag will spell prolonged pain for many businesses. Employment in hotels and restaurants is about 150,000 lower than it was before the pandemic, while the number of jobs in the performing arts is down about 40,000.To be sure, there are signs of a strengthening economy. After many residents fled the city last year, high-priced condos are again being snapped up, and the rental market is showing signs of firming after price drops.Rudin Management, the real estate giant, is trimming back the concessions it offered to attract tenants at the height of the pandemic. “I’m getting calls from people saying their son or daughter or grandson or granddaughter is graduating and asking for an apartment,” said William C. Rudin, the firm’s chief executive. “We didn’t get those calls for a year.”New Yorkers are also getting out more. When the Rockaway Hotel in Queens opened in September after years of planning, a hip destination in a historically working-class beach neighborhood, “people who lived four blocks away would take hotel rooms for the night because they wanted a staycation,” said Terence Tubridy, a managing partner.Since indoor dining resumed in February, the 53-room hotel’s weekend occupancy rate has been 80 percent, Mr. Tubridy said. Along with more visitors recently from California and the Midwest, he reports a flood of inquiries about weddings and birthday parties.As the hotel prepares for its first opportunity to serve the bustling summer crowds at Rockaway Beach, Mr. Tubridy is looking to add 100 employees to his current staff of 180.Amy Scherber is also seeing signs of better days. When the pandemic struck, she was forced to close all but two of her Amy’s Bread shops in New York City and lay off more than 100 employees. She wound up making cakes and pastries herself in a kitchen in Long Island City, Queens.But now, Ms. Scherber has rehired some of her employees, and a crew of four bakers is handling the pastries while she oversees the steadily increasing production of baguettes and other loaves. She has reopened her store in Chelsea Market, a Manhattan tourist destination, and is preparing to reopen other retail locations. Her wholesale business is also rebounding as restaurants that were closed for months are again ordering dinner rolls.“In the last couple of weeks, we finally have seen the business starting to pick up a bit,” said Ms. Scherber, who started her operation 29 years ago. She is hopeful about a strong recovery, she said. But she added, “I see the city taking several years to be the economy it was.”The Empire State Building and One World Trade Center.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times More

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    Employers Offer Incentives for Job Applicants

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    Employers are finding ways to get applicants in the door, and to retain employees once they’re hired.College subsidies for children and spouses. Free rooms for summer hotel employees and a set of knives for aspiring culinary workers. And appetizers on the house for anyone willing to sit down for a restaurant job interview.Determined to lure new employees and retain existing ones in a suddenly hot job market, employers are turning to new incentives that go beyond traditional monetary rewards. In some cases, the offerings include the potential to reshape career paths, like college scholarships and guaranteed admission to management training programs.Despite an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent in May, the sudden reopening of vast swaths of the economy has left companies scrambling for workers as summer approaches, especially in the service sector. What’s more, in many cases the inducements are on top of increases in hourly pay.The result is a cornucopia of new benefits as human resources officers and employees alike rethink what makes for a compelling compensation package. And in a pathbreaking move, some businesses are extending educational benefits to families of employees.The labor market was relatively tight before the pandemic stuck in early 2020, with an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent, but the rise of noncash offerings is a new wrinkle. Many large companies find themselves pitted against other giants in the search for workers with similar types of skills and experience and want to stand out, especially in the rush to staff back up after the pandemic.“We knew we had to do something radically different to make Waste Management attractive when you have other companies looking for the same type of worker,” said Tamla Oates-Forney, chief people officer at Waste Management. “There is such a war for talent that compensation isn’t a differentiator.”“You can never have too many drivers,” she said. “When you think about Amazon and Walmart, we’re going after the same population.”The company will pay for employees to earn bachelor’s and associate degrees, as well as certificates in areas like data analytics and business management. In a significant expansion, Waste Management will begin offering these scholarships to spouses and children of workers this year for enrollment in January.“We can do something that really changes people’s lives,” said Jim Fish, Waste Management’s chief executive. “For someone with kids in high school, this is a big deal.”JBS USA, the nation’s largest meatpacker, began offering to pay for college degrees for its 66,000 workers as well as one child per employee in March. The move followed an increase of more than 30 percent in hourly pay over the last year, said Chris Gaddis, head of human resources at JBS USA.At large beef processing plants, floor workers earn $21 an hour, with salaries rising to $30 an hour for employees with more advanced skills. “We’re seeing a lot more innovation both in terms of wages and secondary incentives, but nobody is doing what we’re doing in terms of rural America,” Mr. Gaddis said.The educational incentives at JBS and Waste Management are designed both to reduce turnover and to attract new employees. Each company fully pays tuition at a selected group of institutions; the JBS program offers a wider variety of majors and certificates. With dependents covered for schooling, careers can stretch from years to decades instead.Each time an hourly employee leaves Waste Management, it costs a minimum of $12,000 to search for and hire a replacement, Mr. Fish said. What’s more, among drivers, 50 percent of safety incidents involve those with three years or less on the job.“In terms of safety, the longer you are here, the better you are,” Mr. Fish said. And by paying for education, he added, “there is a real hook.” Waste Management estimates the cost will be $5 million to $10 million for the first year of the employee program.In the wake of the pandemic, employers are thinking more holistically about their employees and their goals, including personal and family life, said AnnElizabeth Konkel, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. Extending the benefits to spouses and children seeks to address those considerations.“You can’t hide your family life,” Ms. Konkel said. “Everybody has had to wildly change what they’ve done the last 15 months.”As generous as the incentives may seem, they can be cheaper than across-the-board pay raises, said Daniel Zhao, a senior economist with the career site Glassdoor. Still, he said, “committing to a new benefit program is a pretty significant move and signals a longer-term commitment than coupons or one-time bonuses.”Nataly Mendoza Yanez joined JBS four and a half years ago as a production floor employee in Tolleson, Ariz., before moving to the human resources department. With help from the company, she is planning to study international business at nearby Glendale Community College in August.“It feels like the opportunity fell from the sky,” said Ms. Mendoza Yanez, who hopes to work for JBS’s unit in Australia one day. “I’m really excited about it. I was going to go back to school, but it’s pricey.”Nataly Mendoza Yanez, who works for JBS in Tolleson, Ariz., plans to use the company’s help to attend a community college.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesThe competition for new hires is especially intense in the leisure and hospitality industry, which has surged back to life after shutting down almost completely last spring.Applebee’s is seeking to hire 10,000 people this summer and announced last month that it would hand out vouchers for a free appetizer to anyone who scheduled an interview. Hoping for 10,000 applicants, the restaurant chain got 40,000 as a result of the offer, said John Cywinski, Applebee’s president.“Our No. 1-selling category is appetizers, so we decided to offer an app for an app,” Mr. Cywinski said. “I’ve got guests coming back in droves, but I don’t have all the team members I’d like.”To attract workers this summer, Omni Hotels & Resorts is offering a range of incentives, including free hotel rooms for summer employees at some properties, as well as guaranteed entrance into the company’s management training program for staff members who stay through Labor Day. New employees will also receive three free nights at the Omni hotel of their choice.“We have put aside guest rooms in our hotels so employees wouldn’t need to worry about where they would live so they could take this job,” said Joy Rothschild, Omni’s chief human resources officer. “We have never taken guest rooms out of inventory for housing before.”Members of the culinary team will get a free set of knives, and weekly sit-downs with the executive chef in the kitchen where they work so they can tap the chef’s expertise.“We needed to do something to grab the attention of culinary students,” Ms. Rothschild said. “I’ve seen a lot of people offering monetary incentives, but we didn’t feel that was enough. The college students coming want something more than the paycheck.”Not that cash has gone completely out of style — all of Omni’s summer hires get a $250 signing bonus plus a $500 retention bonus at the end of the season.Omni has also raised pay and created new tiers in some jobs based on experience. Entry-level housekeepers earn $16 an hour at the Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, Texas, while those with more than two years’ experience now come in at $17 an hour.Chuck E. Cheese, the family entertainment center chain, is hiring 5,000 employees this summer and recently expanded its scholarship program. It is also offering employees $1,500 bonuses when they refer managers.Ms. Rothschild believes that the additional incentives are needed to fill the ranks. If anything, she added, new ones are on the way.“I don’t think we’re done with incentives,” she said. “We want to see how much traction we get with these, but I suspect we will be coming out with more.” More

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    Are you looking for work or workers? We’d like to hear from you.

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    The nation’s economic upheaval is subsiding now that Covid-19 vaccinations are spreading and restrictions are lifting. But the transition is rocky and filled with uncertainty.Some employers, unable to fill positions, say the enhanced jobless benefits meant to cushion the pandemic’s blow are keeping people from seeking work. Many workers say they are staying off the job because of continuing health concerns or to care for their children or older family members.But everyone’s story is personal. We’d like to hear yours — whether you are looking for work, looking for workers, or finding ways to get by.We may reach out to you individually to chat some more about your answers, so please let us know if you’d be willing to share additional details with us.We will not publish any part of your submission without contacting you first.Are you looking for work or workers? More

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    The Dream: International Travel. The Reality: Chaos and Confusion.

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    The world beckons, especially for those who have been vaccinated, but would-be travelers face a difficult moment when travel possibilities are at odds with the facts of a still reeling world.In recent days, a steady stream of promising news has painted a rosy picture of the return of international leisure travel.More than 105 million people in the United States are fully vaccinated. Greece, Iceland and Croatia, among a growing list of countries, are now open to American tourists. Airlines are resuming overseas flights. And perhaps the biggest development of all: Come summer, fully vaccinated Americans will once again be welcome across Europe.But the optimism may be premature. At the moment, the broader reality is more chaotic, and more sobering.A set of swirling crosscurrents — including a surge in global coronavirus cases, lagging vaccine rollouts in tourist hot spots and the lack of a reliable system to verify vaccinations — may be setting the stage for a slow and tortured return to high-volume international travel, despite ambitious pronouncements and the pressures of a tourism industry hoping to avoid another period of economic strain.Reopening areas to vaccinated tourists is a calculated risk, said Dr. Sarah Fortune, the chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. “My doomsday scenario,” she said, “is a mixing of vaccinated and unvaccinated populations in a setting where there is high viral load and high viral transmission.”At the same time, countries dependent on tourism revenue are pressing to admit more visitors. Most Caribbean countries are open to Americans, pending negative coronavirus tests — and some European countries are not far behind. Travel restrictions in Greece, where tourism accounts for around 25 percent of the country’s work force, were eased in mid-April, allowing for fully vaccinated travelers from the United States, Britain, Israel and European Union member states, among other places, to visit without quarantining or providing negative coronavirus tests. (A broader reopening is planned for later this month.)For now, it’s hard to know whether the travel industry is in the throes of a temporary transition or staring at the long-term complexities of a clash involving wishful thinking, the hard truths of a relentless pandemic and the possibility of responsible tourism.Whatever the case, there’s a churning array of forces affecting the prospects for overseas travel.Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin, which is normally crowded with tourists, was empty during a coronavirus lockdown in November. Germany is now in another lockdown. Lena Mucha for The New York TimesA dire global realityWould-be international travelers, particularly vaccinated Americans, are entering an increasingly chaotic moment when dreams of travel — fueled by more than a year of confinement — are at odds with the facts of a largely shuttered and still reeling outside world.Globally, more new coronavirus cases were reported in recent weeks than at any point since the onset of the pandemic. The numbers are being driven by an uncontrolled outbreak in India, but they also account for troubling trends among European destinations popular with Americans, from France and Germany to Italy and Spain, some of which are now undergoing extended lockdowns and curfews.In Germany, for example, a new round of lockdowns, aimed at combating a third wave of infections, is expected to last until June.Such developments might be hard for Americans to fully appreciate from afar, given the promising trends at home. But government agencies have taken note.In April, the U.S. State Department vastly expanded the list of countries in its “Level 4: Do Not Travel” category, adding, among dozens of destinations, Mexico, Canada and Britain, three of the most popular destinations for Americans. Many Caribbean countries, including the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, are also at Level 4.In India, which is facing a cataclysmic surge, the presence of a potentially more menacing variant — possibly more dangerous to children, and against which vaccines may be less effective — is complicating the crisis. For the prospective traveler, it hints at the threat that emerging variants could play in the months and years to come.Inequality and lagging vaccine rolloutsOutside the United States, vaccination numbers remain comparatively low — in some cases, alarmingly so.In Italy, around 11 percent of the population is fully vaccinated. The number in Mexico, historically the country most visited by American tourists, stands at around 6 percent. In Canada, it’s at 3 percent — though that number is partly explained by the long interval between first and second doses there. By comparison, the United States just passed the 32 percent mark.While many of these percentages have been rising more quickly in recent weeks, there is also reason to believe that progress in some countries may stall.Global vaccine supplies have been disrupted by the surge of coronavirus cases in India, which has curtailed exports in order to meet growing domestic demands. Like most countries, Canada, for example, is entirely dependent on foreign sources for its vaccine supply; as a measure of the share of its population that is fully vaccinated, Canada now lags behind more than 50 other nations.Meanwhile, the push for a return to leisure travel raises questions about the ethics of vaccinated travelers demanding services among largely unvaccinated hosts. Such questions are especially complicated within communities that are economically dependent on tourism revenue.Dr. Mami Taniuchi, an infectious disease researcher at the University of Virginia, said that while the risk of breakthrough infections among vaccinated travelers is low, there is nevertheless an increased risk among unvaccinated workers who would not otherwise be coming together in such large numbers, or in such close quarters, to accommodate tourists.“The risks among vaccinated travelers are significantly reduced, but I worry about the risk of transmission among the people who are working around them,” Dr. Taniuchi said. It would help, she added, if travel workers were part of priority vaccination plans.“In a situation where there’s a mixing of people who are vaccinated and unvaccinated, most of the transmission events are going to be among those who are not vaccinated,” she said.The trouble with ‘vaccine passports’Health certificates that prove one’s immunization status — commonly referred to as “vaccine passports” — have been touted as keys to unlocking international travel. But so far the prospect of developing an easy-to-use and widely accepted digital certificate has been tripped up by a web of bureaucratic, logistical and technical snags.The Biden administration has ruled out the possibility of a centralized federal vaccination database. Instead, individual states (and some cities and territories) have been maintaining a patchwork of records. Any company or organization hoping to develop a digital vaccine certificate in the United States would therefore need to track down immunization data from a range of registries.At present, the most viable option for Americans to prove their immunization status while traveling internationally is to present the Covid-19 vaccination record cards they received when they got their shots. But the cards are easily forged. Several states have offered downloadable PDFs of the cards freely on their websites; fakes have even been offered for sale on TikTok, eBay and Craigslist.The development of digital health certificates is a multidimensional challenge, involving public policy, public health, customer experience and international cooperation, said Eric Piscini, who has overseen the development of IBM’s health passport app, Digital Health Pass.“I’m very optimistic about the long term,” Mr. Piscini said, “but the road is not easy.” He estimated that the European Commission’s Digital Green Certificate won’t be fully operational until late June or July. Integration with platforms beyond Europe will take time.Until then, he said, countries like Greece — which, for now, is verifying visitors’ immunization statuses with easily forged paper certificates — may face both a lack of trust from travelers and pushback from locals who fear that the policies are putting them at risk.Chairs were piled up in front of a restaurant that was closed because of lockdowns in Paris in March.Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAltered destinationsEven if international tourists could travel safely and securely, and without risking the well-being of their hosts, visitors may face yet another impediment: Their destinations may lack many of their usual draws.Throughout the world, the pandemic has shuttered museums, forced restaurants to close and curtailed countless other cultural offerings. Many regions in Europe are subject to local curfews that come and go as case numbers fluctuate. Last month in Spain, confusion reigned over whether socially distanced beachgoers and sunbathers were required to wear masks, though the rule was eventually clarified. (They aren’t.)All of which suggests that, in the near future, there may be a gap between tourists’ expectations and their destinations’ restricted realities.In Paris, for example, bars and restaurants have been closed since the end of October. So, too, are museums — including the Louvre, normally one of the most visited museums in the world. Nighttime curfews, from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., have emptied the city’s streets.In late April, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced plans to relax certain restrictions beginning on May 19, but he left open the possibility of regional delays. The country, he said, will be able to pull an “emergency brake” in certain places, if need be.“I really don’t know what’s going to be attractive to tourists in Paris, now or in the near future,” said Yumi Kayayan, a travel writer who lives near the Louvre, citing a dearth of cultural offerings. The rules governing curfews and regional restrictions, she added, would be difficult for foreigners to make sense of. “To be honest, the rules are very confusing right now even for Parisians,” she said.The big picture, and the costsIn 2019, the number of international tourist arrivals reached 1.5 billion globally — a staggering figure. But grasping the scale of international travel, and the industries that have grown to support and encourage it, is central to understanding the forces pressing now for its return.Governments, tourism boards, airlines, hotel companies, travel agencies and cruise operators, along with tour bus drivers, housekeepers, local guides, pilots, restaurateurs, museum operators, bed-and-breakfast hosts, entertainers, caterers, fishermen, shopkeepers and bar owners — in short, all the people standing to profit from tourism dollars — are facing extreme economic pressure not to lose out on another tourism season. The past year without travel, when international arrivals dropped from 1.5 billion to 381 million, was devastating. For many, another similar year would be unthinkable.And so an already stressed system has been forced to confront an existential quandary: Do countries opt for continuing international lockdowns, or do they increase the risk of disease and court much-needed tourism revenue? New Zealand, which, through a combination of stringent lockdowns, border closures and strict quarantines, has all but eliminated the coronavirus from its shores, has staked its claim at one end of the spectrum. Greece appears to be claiming the other.There are no easy answers, no universal solutions. In many cases, the onus will fall on individual tourists — the fortunate and vaccinated few, plied with incentives and feverish for travel — to thoughtfully navigate the ethical considerations.Of all the variables, only one thing seems inevitable: The choices we make, whether to venture out or huddle close to home, are unlikely to bode well for the individual workers — the unfortunate and unvaccinated many — who, by dint of circumstance, are vulnerable to both the virus and the teetering fortunes of a hard-hit industry.“I do think we’ve learned important lessons over the course of the year about how to engage more safely in public spaces,” said Dr. Fortune, who emphasized that it’s important for vaccinated travelers to continue testing, wearing masks and practicing social distancing.“I think the real danger,” she added, “is that the most vulnerable people are the ones who have the least ability to mitigate risk.”Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. More