New York City’s masses of underemployed and low-paid workers don’t buy the latest dip in Gotham’s unemployment rate — not when an unemployed economist can’t find work at McDonald’s.
“I just don’t see any promise for anything paying either barely higher than minimum wage or at least a bit challenging and engaging,” Paulette Glassman, an underemployed film producer and entertainment executive who lives on the Upper East Side, told The Post last week. “It’s a matter of the emperor has no clothes — everybody from ordinary people to the politicians know the economy is not getting better.”
Glassman should know. She’s struggled to get her career back on track since the financial crisis in 2008 sent it spiraling.
“I am not earning what I should be — certainly less than I earned 20 years ago. I am underemployed, given my background and education,” said Glassman, an NYU grad.
Glassman, who is in her early 50s, is not alone — she has three unemployed or underemployed professional friends in the same sinking ship. One is an economist, 29; another a former packaged-goods sales exec, 42; the third is 60, with two master’s degrees.
“She even looked into working at McDonald’s, and they just laughed,” said Glassman of her 60-year-old friend. “She couldn’t get a job at McDonald’s.”
On Friday things were supposed to be looking up — the city’s unemployment rate dipped 0.1 percent, to 7.9 percent, from 8.0 percent in March. It’s 6.7 percent statewide, 6.3 percent nationally. The statistics revealed the number of NYC employed residents grew by 9,300. The number of unemployed dropped by 4,200, a pace of growth slower than at the start of 2012 and 2013, according to an analysis by economist Barbara Byrne Denham.
In addition, a recent study by the Fiscal Policy Institute showed that New York City’s proportion of low-wage jobs surged from 25 percent of the total local job market to 31 percent by the end of last year. A typical local food-service job in New York pays about $25,000 a year, excluding benefits.
“It’s hard to make ends meet in this economy; I see things getting worse,” said Winsome Stoner, 39, a mother of five children who works at the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger food pantry on Fulton Street, Brooklyn. Stoner and her husband, a security guard, supplement their low income with food donated by the Bed-Stuy charity.
“I am not on food stamps anymore,” said Stoner. “I sent out job applications elsewhere and got nothing.”
Food pantries supported by City Harvest, like Bed-Stuy,’s are bulging with underemployed and low-income New Yorkers.
“City Harvest is seeing significantly more households accessing emergency food . . . since this time last year — new clients are universally citing the reduction of SNAP benefits and underemployment as the reasons,” said Jilly Stephens, executive director of City Harvest, referring to food stamps. “We will distribute 15 percent more food through our markets this year.”