Crains starts December off on a high note with a story full of very sobering polling data about how New Yorkers feel about the economy, the security of their jobs and other things. The results are not uplifting. (In the image above, the figures on the left are results from 2003. The ones on the right are current.) Per a story written by Matthew Sollars:

Wall Street’s worst collapse since the Great Depression has put a scare into New Yorkers, with nearly 40% believing their jobs are at risk, a new Crain’s New York Business poll shows. A growing fear that job losses will ripple throughout the city is also causing residents to pull back on their spending—nearly 80% say they have already done so—just when the city’s retailers are entering the critical holiday selling season. “New Yorkers are hurting and scared,” says Craig Charney, president of Charney Research, the firm that conducted the poll. “These numbers are startling and far worse than anything we’ve seen, even in the last recession.”

In the Crain’s poll, 59% of those surveyed said they believed the city’s economy was in poor condition, compared with 34% five years ago, when the city was emerging from its last recession. In part, the increasing pessimism reflects a drumbeat of bad news and dire predictions about job losses. Just last week, the New York state comptroller predicted that 175,000 jobs could be lost in the city in the next two years—the highest estimate yet. When asked about job security, 39% said their job was “fairly insecure or very insecure” from layoffs. That’s a high number, considering that the unemployment rate in the city is still a relatively modest 5.7%.

There is way more in the story itself as well as links to the PDFs with the full poll results. Not a pretty picture.