What happened to businesses once based in or near the World Trade Center?
Some have returned to downtown Manhattan. They include Aon Corp., which lost 176 employees in the attack and moved back downtown with the help of a $15 million incentive package. Other financial services companies moved some or all of their operations to midtown Manhattan or elsewhere in the metropolitan area. Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 658 employees, has leased temporary space in midtown Manhattan and has no plans to return to downtown. Thousands of small businesses affected by the attack have resumed business or plan to do so with the help of federal and state aid. The city has lost 162,900 jobs since the attack and unemployment stands at 8.1 percent — well above the national rate. Economists generally agree the attack significantly worsened economic problems that began when the stock market foundered in the previous year.
