NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Corporate movers and shakers are moving back to the Big Apple, a news report said Monday.

After 50 years of flight, corporate CEOs are returning to New York City because they need to be close to other decision makers, the New York Times reported.

Citing Labor Department numbers, the newspaper said the number of corporate headquarters and subsidiaries in Manhattan has more than doubled since 1990, evidence at the city is re-establishing itself as the city of big bosses.

Attitudes about having business headquarters in the Big Apple are much different than they were during the city's fiscal crisis of the 1970's, when there was a drastic increase in the companies leaving New York's skyscrapers in favor of the suburbs.

While companies started leaving New York decades earlier, the number leaving during the 1970s increased drastically. Companies that fled the city included General Electric (up $0.31 to $33.27, Charts) and PepsiCo (up $0.21 to $60.25, Charts), the newspaper said.

More corporate leaders have come to believe that "they need to be in a global city," Kathryn Wylde, chief executive of the New York City Partnership, a business consortium, told the paper.

Corporate leaders realize now more than ever they "can't afford to be in the boondocks," the paper quoted her as saying.

But while CEOs are moving back, many workers who once would have worked in Manhattan are now in other, cheaper locations, and communicate with headquarters via e-mail, fax and corporate networks.

Meanwhile, senior corporate executives are increasingly earning enough to support a life on the island of Manhattan, the report said.

With the rise in executive pay, they can afford rents, restaurant tabs and private-school tuition, the paper said, making it easier for executives to build their lives in the city.

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