Mayor Bill de Blasio took great pride Thursday in signing the first piece of legislation of his mayoralty: the paid-sick-leave bill. But the move only illustrates why a personal-finance Web site has just ranked the city one of the worst places for finding a job.
Under the new law, come April 1, companies with as few as five workers must offer at least five paid sick days a year.
But April 1 is likely to turn out to be April Fool’s for New York workers. Because the consequence of this law is likely to be . . . fewer jobs. Businesses that can’t afford to pay sick leave will hire fewer workers, move or shut down. All of which will make the New York job market even tougher.
This city’s habit of making it more difficult for people to find work isn’t just theory. In a review of the 60 biggest US cities, a nonpartisan, personal-finance Web site called WalletHub has just ranked us the second-worst place in the nation for finding a job. Only Los Angeles fares worse.
It’s no coincidence.
The rankings were meant “to give people a sense of where on the map the strongest job markets and greatest prospects for long-term financial security can be found,” said WalletHub. It relied on 13 measures, including the number of job openings in a city, employment growth, the cost of living, the income-tax burden and other factors.
So how ironic that de Blasio claims the sick-leave bill will provide folks “more economic security” — the opposite of what the WalletHub ranking suggests. Indeed, with the law now making New Yorkers even more expensive to hire, LA had better watch out: New York might soon overtake it as the No. 1 worst big city in America for jobs.