City’s Unemployment Rate Grows
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
New York’s unemployment rate climbed almost a full percentage point in the month of August, according to the State’s Department of Labor.
The city’s adjusted unemployment rate hit 5.8% in August, up from 5% in July, representing the largest month-to-month increase on record since current data began being recorded in 1976.
The city’s rate is still below the national average of 6.1%, but that gap is likely to close as the turmoil on Wall Street continues to result in more layoffs.
In the last year, New York has lost more than 11,000 jobs in the finance and insurance sectors, but the toll will be considerably higher by the time the financial shakeout runs its course. Some reports estimate that the number of layoffs could be more than 40,000 in the finance and insurance sectors. Wall Street jobs generally create two or three others in the wider economy, so the current upheaval could lead to more than 100,000 losing their jobs in other industries.
