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New York’s jobless crisis is dire, despite the upbeat headlines coming from Albany’s data release this week.
The telltale signs, buried deep below the tower of official statistics, show New York is not creating jobs as quickly as it is losing them, and has a flood of new claimants filing for disability benefits.
A look at the numbers shows the desperate character of both city and state employment.
The seasonally adjusted data reveal that New York state officially added 15,400 jobs last month, but shed a total of 7,800 jobs in April and May, according to the Department of Labor.
Amazingly, the number of new claims for disability benefits reached 5,502 statewide in the same period, with an additional 1,875 in New York City, according to US Social Security Administration data. So back-of-the-envelope math says 15,400 jobs created, less 15,200 not working.
The 7,377 new disability filings in the state mirrors an alarming national pattern. The number of Americans claiming disability benefits in the past three months hit 246,000.
Only 225,000 net jobs nationwide were created in the same three-month period, according to data released by Republican staffers on the Senate Budget Committee in Washington.
Since 2008, 3.6 million Americans have been added to Social Security disability programs.
Officially, according to state labor officials, the labor market is rebounding. By their count, New York saw nearly 139,100 jobs added in the past 12 months, 80,000 of them in New York City. Across the nation, 1.95 million jobs were added in the last year.
In New York City, the private-sector jobs count grew by 11,500 last months.
Officials say there’s a strange twist: The expansion of the labor force is the reason unemployment crept up to 10 percent in New York City from 9.7 percent in May.
Statewide the unemployment rate rose to 8.9 percent from 8.6 percent.
“When more job seekers enter or re-enter the labor market due to renewed confidence about finding employment, an area’s unemployment rate temporarily rises,” according to the Department of Labor.
Meanwhile, the department noted that the state generated 0.2 percent jobs growth last month compared with the nation’s anemic 0.1 percent gain.
The number of New York City workers with jobs effectively remained unchanged over the prior 12 months.
But the underlying employment pattern is grim.
“New York’s unemployment rate is indicative that America remains in a volatile economy and that jobs are hard to come by in the current climate,” according to Ted Beck, chief executive of the National Endowment for Financial Education.
“In this belt-tightening economy, many Americans are being hindered by frozen wages, elimination of employer match on savings, and more out-of-pockets costs,” Beck added.