City Comptroller Brad Lander joined Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” Monday night to discuss his office’s first monthly economic outlook of 2023.

As the threat of recession looms during a time of high inflation, war in Ukraine and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, Lander said things are getting a little better in the city.

“Inflation signs have clearly eased,” Lander said. “They’re still up there, but we’ve seen significant reductions even on the consumer side. Gas prices down, consumer prices down, even asking rents — which of course remain way above where they were — this was the first month that we saw asking rents decline.”

People are also traveling more, according to Lander. The number of people who are coming into city airports from outside the U.S. is above pre-pandemic levels for the first time. Lander suspects the increase in travel is due to a mix of increased tourism and business.

“International air travel coming into New York is above pandemic levels for the very first time and that’s obviously a really good sign,” Lander said.

However, more New Yorkers are in shelter than ever before. Lander says that 66,831 people, including many asylum seekers, were in city shelters as of Jan. 2, and that many of these people are staying in hotels.

Lander insisted that the city needs help from the government, calling for city migrants to receive work authorization.

“We need help from the federal government. We need help from the state government,” Lander said. “Really, the thing that would help the most would be work authorization. Lots of these folks want to work.”

Looking ahead, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 2023 State of the State Address is Tuesday at 1 p.m. and Lander is hoping Hochul will focus on affordable housing.

“We need more housing vouchers and protections against evictions,” Lander said. “And we need more social and affordable housing in addition to more market rates.”

During Monday’s interview, Lander also discussed the nurses striking in the city at two major private hospitals, layoffs in the technology industry across the U.S. and Mayor Eric Adams’ first year in office.

“On the big issues on things like housing affordability, these are thorny problems and they’re going to take more than a year to solve,” Lander said.