What does the city spend per resident, and how has that changed?

Each square is $100 per resident, adjusted for inflation to fiscal 2025 prices. The city's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. Move the slider and the rows grow or shrink. Click a row for its line.

Spent per resident in 2000Added since 2000Cut since 2000

Each row leaves out its workers' pensions, most of their health insurance and the debt on its buildings, which have rows of their own. Counted back, police, fire, jails and prosecutors came to about $2,700 per resident in fiscal 2025, not $1,496, and schools about $4,400, not $3,967. Inflation here is consumer prices; measured against a federal index of what state and local governments pay for workers, supplies and construction, which rose faster, total spending per resident rose about 31% from fiscal 2000 to 2025, not 53%. Fiscal 2023 to 2026 also include one-time spending on newly arrived migrants: $3.75 billion in fiscal 2024 and $3.02 billion in 2025, by the State Comptroller's count.

Sources: spending by line from the Comptroller's annual financial reports and the fiscal 2027 adopted budget (part two); population from the Census Bureau's county estimates for the five boroughs; prices from the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index for the New York metropolitan area, averaged over each fiscal year and expressed in fiscal 2025 prices. Fiscal 2026 and 2027 are budget plans (2026 as modified in June 2026, 2027 as adopted), not adjusted for inflation.

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