Financial sector is dead, especially on the retail side. Real estate hasn't crashed in the New York area (even in Queens where I now live, with my current nabe a haven for Manhattanities looking for relatively cheaper rents for the last two years or so), although it has plateaued. Amazing, considering the mass layoffs at the wirehouses (NY's bread and butter, which pays for the massive government and healthcare bureacracy), and the decline in inflows from the Euros, Arabs, and Chinese.
Illegals seem to be going back to Ecuador, Mexico, and Guatemala in both New York and New Jersey. Chinese vulture investors active buying up businesses and property in the outer boroughs.
In short, nobody is hiring, the financial sector has downsized, but we are not in the tailspin that Michigan, Ohio are in, nor are we seeing the real estate crash that has beset Florida, Arizona, and Nevada. Of course, if you've spent time in those three states, you know that they live and die by the boom and bust cycle in real estate. FL and NV still have the problem of attracting employers outside of the tourism/low level service sector for various reasons.
My sister tells me that things in TN are relatively stable, largely because they didn't have the huge run-up in real estate that we did, plus she has a military base right next door that provides a stable source of employment.
Good take from Astoria or Rego Park