It is only by two-tenths of a percent, but New York's unemployment numbers were broken down and found to be higher than the national average (U3 numbers that is). I guess it isn't too surprising, especially with that infamous street downtown that's been hemorrhaging jobs but still full of greed. Like all previous news on NY's economy since September, it's just bad out there.
From The Gothamist:
And what makes all those big numbers worse is how we've handled the crisis so far. Thanks to Congress' unwillingness to put strings attached to the TARP money, Bushies allowed $4 billion of it to be paid out as bonuses to Merrill Lynch execs before Bank of America bought them out. That is four billion dollars gone to those that do not need it, four billion that could have helped families with nothing, or gone into this state right here with a $15 billion dollar budget gap. So many good uses are gone because the wealthy financial sector was able to feed their greed with money meant to help restart the economy.
Guess NY State will be borrowing unemployment funds for a while: New York City's unemployment rate rose to 7.4% in December, up from 6.3% in November. According to Crain's, this is the highest in almost five years and it's over the national unemployment rate, which is 7.2%. The NY State unemployment rate grew from 6% to 7% in December, with the state losing 49,300 jobs last month in December. The NY State Labor Department said, "In just the last three months, the state has lost more than 100,000 private sector jobs, including 49,300 in December 2008. This is the steepest one-month drop since October 2001 in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks." Another NYC stat from the NYS Labor Dept.: "Since December 2007, the number of nonfarm jobs has decreased by 53,600, or 1.4 percent, and the number of private sector jobs has decreased by 49,100, or 1.5 percent."
I know President Obama has been making a lot of changes so far, but I hope this dynamic between the rich and poor gets metted out sooner than later.
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