Sometimes a picture is indeed worth 1,000 words.  Take these two graphs we just came across in reports on civil service and housing by the Institute of Public Administration, successor to the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, the scrappy 1906 powerhouse that fueled the good-government movement and fostered the first science of public administration.

It’s everything you need to know about The Roaring Twenties and Great Depression in New York City.

( OK, not everything, but a lot.)

Graph No. 1 shows average salaries of New York City employees 1920-1940 compared to the cost of living.

What jumps out is how good it was to have a city job during the Great Depression.

As the 20’s began, average salaries (dark line) had fallen far below the cost of living (dotted line). City workers couldn’t earn enough to live well.

Within two years, the lines converge — wages meet the cost of living in the base year of 1923.

And then, within four years  — even before the stock market crash on Black Friday 1929 — the lines start to diverge again. Only now, the cost of living takes a dive — it was called the Depression for a reason — while salaries rise slightly, keeping pay well above the cost of living. So a city job (if you could get one) was a good way of surviving the Depression.

Now take construction. You can see why it was called The Roaring Twenties.

Class dismissed.