New York City ended fiscal 2015 with a $5 million surplus, city Comptroller Scott Stringer said in the city's annual
In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the city's general fund had revenues and other financing sources of $78.035 billion. Expenditures and other financing uses totaled $78.030 billion.
It marked the 35th straight year of a budget surplus according to generally accepted accounting principles, which New York adopted after its financial crisis of the mid-1970s. The city again received the Government Finance Officers Association's certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting.
New York has $40.46 billion of general obligation debt, the report said, consisting of $33.49 billion of fixed-rate bonds and $6.97 billion of variable-rate bonds. The city maintained its GO bond ratings across the board during the year.
Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's rate the bonds AA, while Moody's Investors Service rates them Aa2. "The city's sound approach to budget development features detailed revenue and expenditure forecasting, proactive budget monitoring, and effective actions to eliminate projected deficits," said Fitch. "Nascent gaps are dealt with quickly, and year¬end results tend to be very close to break¬even, with positive variation from budget."
As of June 30, Stringer's asset management bureau had $162.9 billion of assets under management for the New York City Retirement Systems; the city's five pension systems earned $4.746 billion in net investment income in fiscal 2015 and paid benefits totaling $13.4 billion. Employer and employee contributions to the City pension systems were $10.0 billion and $1.8 billion.
Stringer called the city's economic performance satisfactory. Real gross city product increased by 3%, up from fiscal year 2014's 2.1% growth.
"Private sector job creation remained strong although not quite at the record pace of the prior year, and the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since 2008," said the report. The average weekly earnings of private-sector employees increased at the fastest rate in seven years but was still only 2.5% on a year-over-year basis.
The city added 114,600 private sector jobs from June 2014 through June 2015, fewer than in the previous 12 months but still the second-highest over 25 years. Health care sector was the largest contributor of new jobs, adding 26,600, also from June 2014 through June 2015.
Stringer said the city's outlook for fiscal 2016 remains "moderately positive" despite global market volatility, notably the financial turmoil in China.
"Both the national and local economies continue to create jobs at a brisk pace, which should continue to increase aggregate spending power and create some upward pressure on wages," he said.
With inflation still negligible, said Stringer, the Federal Reserve has little reason to push interest rates to levels that might constrain economic growth.
"Also, households and businesses have not increased their indebtedness to the degree they did in the previous economic expansion, so a collapse of asset prices and spending seems less likely," he said.
