City economies don’t shut down after dark. Much like the sun, rising in one place as it sets in another, a city’s night has a life of its own. From the late shift nurse to the bartender at a neighborhood dive, or the line cook at dinner service and public transit workers driving fans to a game, cities are teeming with economic activity long after the sun goes down. Yet the true scope of this “nighttime economy” often remains largely undefined.
The Philadelphia Nighttime Economy Study was a innovative effort to size, characterize, and contextualize the city’s economic activity between 6:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.—going beyond nightlife activities and focusing on all economic activity that happens at night. The results were striking: nighttime activity accounts for 13% of all jobs in Philadelphia, across industries as varied as healthcare, hospitality, arts, logistics, and public safety.
The approach to quantifying nighttime activity was a mixed methods strategy to data collection, blending static data from the US Census with temporal and locational data about worker commuter patterns and locations. The ESI team leveraged past work that we have done in the field, looking at the New York City nightlife economy, and benefited from engaging with nightlife policy expert and University of Pennsylvania Associate Professor of Practice, Michael Fichman. Prof. Fichman is a member of an advisory board to the Philadelphia Department of Commerce’s Night Time Economy Office, which commissioned the study.
Below is a conversation between Gina Lavery, Executive Vice President & Principal, who led the project at ESI and Professor Fichman.
Gina: Let’s start with the headline number: 13% of all jobs in Philly are part of the nighttime economy. That really drove home how much of the city is active after 6:00 p.m. To get there, we had to develop “nighttime coefficients” for different sectors, piecing together a lot of different datasets. Michael, you’ve been working on nighttime economy research for years. Why has it been so hard to pin down the size of this sector in the past, and what made our approach different?
Michael: One of the biggest challenges in measuring nighttime economies is that most data instruments aren’t time-sensitive. You might know how many workers there are in a particular industry, but you don’t know when they’re working. That’s especially problematic in sectors like hospitality or healthcare, where you have a mix of daytime and nighttime activity. For example, a lot of previous studies would just take the whole restaurant industry and call it “nighttime,” because it’s hospitality. That obviously doesn’t reflect reality – restaurants serve lunch too. In this study, we combined census microdata on industry-specific commute times with things like Google Places data on business hours to get a much more accurate, time-sensitive estimate.
Gina: And I think what also made this study unique was that we didn’t just focus on “nightlife” in the narrow sense. We looked at the nighttime economy as a whole. Why is that distinction important?
Michael: That distinction really matters. Most nighttime economy studies or nighttime economy offices look at nightlife—bars, clubs, entertainment venues – not the whole of “life at night.” But when you go out to participate in nightlife, you interact with so many other people: the SEPTA operator who gets you there, the trash collectors, the folks delivering goods, or the nurses just getting off shift. They’re all part of the same interconnected nighttime world. And they all rely on the same city systems—transit, safety, and emergency services—that don’t always function with the same support after dark. Philadelphia’s Night Time Economy Office’s brief is more in line with places like London, where the focus is on life at night more broadly.
Gina: I think that was really important for leadership in Philadelphia, too. It’s about making Philly a city that works for people who don’t have a 9-5 schedule. What does a city look like for someone who gets off work at 2 a.m.? Where can they grab food, do errands, or even access city services that usually operate during traditional business hours? It’s a very real policy issue, not just a lifestyle one.
Michael: Yes, and that vision has guided how the City set up its Night Time Economy Office. When I was nightlife chair of City Council’s Arts and Culture Task Force, we proposed and designed this office with a lot of forethought. We interviewed global nighttime economy leaders to understand best practices and understand how they thought this could be done best. We saw that some cities focused narrowly on downtown entertainment, but we wanted something more holistic—and more inclusive of the people working, or sleeping, through the night.
Gina: It’s getting a little long in the tooth, but let’s talk about the pandemic recovery story for a minute. When we looked at five years of job, wage, and establishment data, it was clear the pandemic left a mark. What’s your read on Philly’s recovery trajectory?
Michael: From the licensing data I’ve analyzed, the restaurant industry has recovered best. Entertainment businesses are not being formed as quickly as they were in the 2010s. We are losing overall numbers of assembly businesses. Wage taxes are still lagging a bit – meaning less staff. Amusement taxes are back to where they were. It’s mixed, but considering how devastating 2020 and 2021 were, the bounce-back is impressive. But what’s still unclear is how the next generation of consumers—folks raised on virtual experiences—want to engage with in-person nightlife. The currency of being out and about isn’t what it used to be, and we don’t yet know what that means long-term.
Gina: What would it take for Philly to truly become a 24-hour city, especially as we gear up for 2026?
Michael: First, I want to give credit to people in the Commerce Department and beyond who’ve been planning for this moment. Creating a Nighttime Economy Office ahead of 2026 was smart, and there are some great training and programming efforts already underway. Plus, Philly has a solid track record of hosting large-scale events—the papal visit, sports parades, concerts.
I’m deeply concerned about the SEPTA funding crisis. None of it works if SEPTA isn’t at full function. If the system is unreliable, we’re in trouble. Imagine a city gripped by gridlock with all these tourists – it would be a nightmare, not just for residents, but for the city and state’s reputation on the global stage.
Gina: Exactly. We can’t be a 24-hour city without 24-hour infrastructure. And beyond that, we need to think about things like late-night childcare, nighttime access to community centers, and how city services can adapt to non-traditional schedules. There’s a whole parallel universe of needs out there.
Michael: Totally. It’s an exciting time to think about these things. I hope this study gets other cities thinking, too. It takes technical know-how and creativity—this isn’t just a copy-paste kind of analysis. It’s work worth doing.
A thriving nighttime economy is much more than arts and culture, dining, and bars (although those are all important components of a vibrant city). Focusing on the nighttime economies of our cities is about growing a more inclusive, accessible, and resilient community. ESI’s recent report for Philadelphia shows that thousands of residents work outside the traditional 9-to-5 window, and they power everything from entertainment and dining to logistics, healthcare, and transit. And the systems that support them—governance, planning, transportation, and safety—are catching up thanks to the creativity and forethought of this issue in the City.
Gina Lavery, Executive Vice President & Principal | Lavery@econsultsolutions.com
Gina Lavery is an executive vice president and principal of Econsult Solutions, Inc. (ESI). Ms. Lavery has led a range of projects for ESI, primarily focused on urban planning, real estate, transportation, higher education, and public policy—particularly where these areas intersect with economic development.
Michael Fichman, Associate Professor of Practice
Michael Fichman is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Master of Urban Spatial Analytics (MUSA) program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design. He is also a Research Associate with PennPraxis. Prof. Fichman is teaching a new graduate course at the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School this fall called The City At Night, and being sure to keep a busy DJ schedule after hours. He’s currently advising the Greater London Authority on a new nightlife strategy and studying Pennsylvania’s creative workforce for the PA Council on the Arts. He recently conducted strategic planning studies related to nightlife infrastructure and creative spaces on behalf of the governments of Nashville, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Copenhagen.
