New York’s unemployment rate of 7.6% is the lowest in the US thanks to the continued popularity of working from home and the lack of foreign tourists, many of whom have been put off by rising crime.
Labor statistics for the New York area showed that the unemployment rate in the Big Apple is among the highest of any major U.S. city.
The stats also showed the Bronx’s unemployment rate jumping to 11.1 percent, and black New Yorkers, who have been disproportionately hit by the pandemic, are facing 15.2 percent unemployment, according to Bloomberg.
Black New Yorkers are most likely to be essential or service workers, many of whose industries have been hardest hit by the COVID lockdown.
Part of the reason why New York is lagging behind others is how long it took to open back up post-pandemic, Wells Fargo senior economist Mark Witner said.
The usually bustling Rockefeller Plaza came to a standstill in March 2021. Unemployment in New York continues to be one of the highest among US cities as office workers stay at home and tourists avoid the city altogether.
“The New York economy is recovering more slowly because it is heavily dependent on the office and leisure sectors,” Witner told Bloomberg. “Cities that reopened faster after initial lockdowns at the start of the pandemic also tended to recover faster.”
Since the pandemic, property prices in New York have skyrocketed, but offices in Midtown Manhattan and the Financial District remain empty as many employees choose to work from home.
As a result, subway ridership remains at 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels, and surrounding businesses in Manhattan, especially in services, hospitality and entertainment, have yet to fully recover, according to Bloomberg.
New York City’s tourism industry also suffered as it failed to attract foreign travelers.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has made returning workers to the office one of his top priorities, asking executives from the city’s major companies to prioritize getting workers back to the office to boost the city’s economy.
As a result, subway ridership remains at 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels, and surrounding businesses in Manhattan have yet to fully recover.
“We can’t send mixed messages,” Adams told bank and tech executives during a February news conference. “We can’t keep kicking the can down the road.”
“Now is the time for us to go back,” he added. “I hope that over the next few weeks, the CEOs will come up with a realistic plan for ‘this is when you need to come back’.
Manhattan, which accounts for 57 percent of jobs in the city and is the city’s biggest tourist attraction, had nearly 275,000 fewer checks issued than in March 2020, according to the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
“Manhattan is a huge economic and social engine,” Andrew Righi, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, told Bloomberg.
But with fewer people commuting to the office—only 30 percent of employees go to work compared to 2019, and only a fifth of companies plan to return in full—companies and city officials have been forced to plan for recovery without focus. upon returning to the office.
“This is likely to be a structural shift in how people feel about work, commuting and just being in the office,” Alex Hale, vice president of research at the Citizens Budget Commission, told Bloomberg.
The move to work from home could be an opportunity to turn empty Manhattan offices into cultural hubs, biotech labs and startup incubators, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander told Bloomberg.
“New York has changed its face many times,” he said.
In late January, the Wall Street giants began announcing new employee return dates. Citigroup told its metropolitan employees they should be ready to return to the office at least two days a week starting Feb. 7, a person familiar with politics told the New York Times.
Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase have told employees to return to the office from Feb. 1, after both delayed their pre-holiday returns as COVID-19 cases spiraled out of control ahead of the holidays. Goldman Sachs has scheduled a January 14 return date before making changes.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams asked the city’s major corporate executives to prioritize getting employees back into the office to boost the city’s economy.
BNP Paribas has set a return date of February 7 for all US employees after postponing its in-person work plans by about a month due to Omicron’s surge.
The retail banking company, which employs about 14,000 people in the US, expects US employees to work at least one day a week, similar to its policy late last year, before the Omicron variant took over the country.
“Because of what happened with Omicron, we wanted to go back to a more conservative mode. So we only have people in the office if there is a critical business need,” Kevin Abrashek, head of human resources at the company in New York, told Reuters.
In addition to returning employees to offices, Adams also unveiled his latest economic development plan earlier this month, which he says will help rebuild the city.
His plan includes helping small businesses and developing specific industries, including legal marijuana.
New York City legalized recreational marijuana use last year for over 21s, but recreational sales are not expected to begin until the end of this year or early next year as the state sorts out rules for what is expected to be one of the largest legal marijuana markets in the US. .
New York City’s tourism industry also suffered as it failed to attract foreign travelers. once
City Hall estimates the industry will generate $1.3 billion in sales and 19,000 to 24,000 jobs.
Adams also has a plan to get tourists to visit the five districts and spend the money.
Tourism in New York fell from 66.6 million visitors in 2019 to 22.3 million in 2020 when the pandemic hit.
Adam said he would also focus on beautifying the city, prioritizing street cleaning, graffiti, and garbage collection.
The city will also add benches, bike racks, flower pots and other amenities, and set long-term standards for street and sidewalk dining structures that have become a staple during the pandemic.
“We have to have a clean city, and every part of the city is a reflection of how we feel about ourselves,” Adams said. “When our streets are dirty, it sends the wrong signal.”
Despite his big plans to get the townspeople involved and clean up the streets, Adams didn’t come up with a comprehensive plan to deal with rising crime.
The city is now recovering from the February crime wave, when the number of incidents rose by almost 60 percent compared to last year.
The city’s latest crime figures show 9,138 incidents in February, up from 5,759 in the same period in 2021 — with double-digit increases in nearly all major categories.
There were 32 murders in February, three more than in the same month last year.
Many other categories saw a shocking jump, including car theft, which rose nearly 105 percent; grand theft, which jumped nearly 80 percent from the previous year; robberies, which rose by 56 percent; A 44 percent increase in burglaries and a 22 percent surge in assaults. Rape also rose by a staggering 35 percent in February.
Residents also reacted with horror to a series of high-profile incidents, including the brutal hammering of a woman by a homeless man in Queens and the feces of another woman in the Bronx, after which the alleged perpetrator, a violent criminal with a history of 44 arrests, was released without bail.