City debt: New York has more than four times the liabilities of Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and other cities

Reason Foundation finds that New York City had over $300 billion in total liabilities at the end of 2022, more than four times Chicago’s $74 billion in liabilities and nearly six times Los Angeles’ $51.3 billion.

At the end of fiscal 2022, Houston and the District of Columbia also had over $20 billion in total liabilities.

Reason Foundation finds that New York City’s liabilities reached $34,567 per capita in 2022, the highest in the nation. The next highest per capita liabilities were in the District of Columbia ($29.4k per capita), Chicago ($26.9k per capita), and Atlanta ($21.2k per capita).

At $18,182 per capita, Yonkers, New York, surprisingly had the next highest liabilities, followed by Austin, Texas, with over $16,653 in liabilities per capita.

When looking at cities’ public pension systems, New York and Chicago stand out above the rest of the nation. At the end of 2022, New York City had over $42 billion in pension liabilities, and Chicago had over $35 billion.

On a per capita basis, Chicago’s public pension liabilities ($12,903 per capita) are well over double New York City’s ($4,810 per capita). With $6,553 in pension liabilities per capita, Portland also ranks worse than New York City.

Cincinnati and Pittsburgh had over $3,000 per capita public pension liabilities.

In 2022, governments representing the 100 most populous municipalities across America owed $251.2 billion in employee-related debt, including $126.4 billion in net public pension liabilities and $124.8 billion in net other post-employment benefit liabilities, such as medical benefits promised to retirees.

Ten municipalities—New York, Chicago, Austin, Phoenix, Houston, Portland, Boston, San Jose, Fort Worth, and San Diego—account for 80.1% of the total employee-related debt among the 100 most populous municipalities.

In 2022, New York and Chicago were responsible for 67.3% of the total employee debt held by the country’s 100 largest municipalities.

Several entities in this analysis are cities that have consolidated their operations and financial reporting with the overlapping county. Effectively, these jurisdictions are merged into a single administrative entity. These consolidated governments include Nashville-Davidson (TN), Jacksonville-Duval (FL), San Francisco, Honolulu, Denver, and Philadelphia. Due to their structure and financial reporting practices, these entities cannot be fairly separated into distinct city and county categories. These entities are included in the larger category of counties within this report because their geographic and jurisdictional boundaries match those of the formerly independent counties.

A detailed debt summary for the 100 most populous municipalities from 2020 to 2022 is here: https://debttrends.transparencyproject.reason.org/municipal.

Overview of Government Financial Transparency Project: State and local debt trends 2020-2020

State debt: California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey and Texas each have over $200 billion in total liabilities

County debt: Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Denver, Miami-Dade and Cook counties among worst in nation

City debt: New York has more than four times the liabilities of Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and other cities

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Source: https://reason.org/transparency-project/debt-trends-state-local/municipal/