In the biggest jump in a single month on record, New York City’s unemployment rate leapt to 8.1 percent from 6.9 percent in February, the State Labor Department reported on Thursday.þþThat rate matched the national unemployment rate for the month and reflected an unprecedented one-year rise from 4.4 percent a year earlier. The rapid deterioration of the city’s job market has erased the notion that the region could be insulated from the wave of job losses sweeping across America.þþAll told, there were about 335,000 unemployed people in the city, a number reached only once — briefly — in more than a decade. It is almost double the 175,000 city residents who were unemployed a year ago. Over the same period, the number of private-sector jobs in the city has dropped by almost 77,000, to 3.13 million, the report showed.þþ“The city’s economy continues to weaken month by month” and the rate of job loss is still accelerating, said James Brown, an analyst at the Labor Department. “The job market usually starts to build momentum in February with strong gains every month through June.”þþThe city lost about 3,600 jobs in February, a month in which it normally gains five times that number, Mr. Brown said. On average over the last decade, the city added 18,900 jobs each February.þþA wholesale retrenchment on Wall Street and in related professions is being compounded by uncertainty in tourism-related businesses, which usually start hiring in February to prepare for a flock of visitors in the spring and summer, the data showed.þþThere were 4,000 fewer jobs in the city’s leisure and hospitality sectors last month than in February 2008, the report showed. The number of jobs in retailing declined even more and went down by about 6,000 in the last year. þþBut the cuts in the higher-paying fields of finance and business services have been greater, with a combined loss of more than 40,000 jobs in the past year — and the effects of the foregone salaries and bonuses are still rippling through the economy.þþResponding to the fast rise in unemployment, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that the city was expanding services to help residents find new jobs and train for new careers. This week, the city started a “boot camp” for people who want to start their own businesses.þþ“While the city’s unemployment rate has been much higher in past recessions, the rise in February’s rate reflects what I hear from New Yorkers in the subway and on neighborhood streets: People are hurting, and they are worried about losing their jobs or struggling to find new ones,” Mr. Bloomberg said. þþWhen normal seasonal fluctuations in hiring are taken into account, the city job loss in February was equivalent to shedding about 17,500 jobs in a month, said Barbara Byrne Denham, chief economist for Eastern Consolidated, a real estate investment firm in Manhattan. Ms. Denham said that she did not expect the downward momentum in the local economy to slow “in the foreseeable future.” þþThe unemployment rate remained higher last month among residents of in the Bronx (10.8 percent) and Brooklyn (8.8 percent) than Manhattan (7.7 percent). But job losses were rising faster in Manhattan than in any other borough. The number of unemployed Manhattanites has doubled in the last year, while the ranks of the jobless have increased by about 83 percent in the Bronx and 89 percent in BrooklynþþThe government defines the unemployed as people willing and able to work but unable to find jobs.þþNew York State’s unemployment rate also jumped, rising to 7.8 percent in February from 7 percent in January. That was the highest rate for the state since June 1993.þþ“In the past six months, the state has lost almost 150,000 private-sector jobs, while the state’s unemployment rate climbed to its highest level in more than 15 years,” said Peter A. Neenan, director of the Labor Department’s Division of Research and Statistics. “Outside of New York City, the region’s unemployment rate stood at a 25-year high.”þþOn Wednesday, New Jersey officials said that state’s unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent in February from 7.3 percent in January.þþ
Source: NY Times
