New York has always had a special affinity with Labor Day. After all, the first Labor Day parades were held here. And many of the battles for better working conditions were fought and won here.
But this Labor Day, the outlook for the New York worker is not nearly as good as it ought to be. At 8.4 percent, our city’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average — and would be higher still, except that so many people have given up looking for jobs altogether. Others find themselves in jobs below their skill level, or working part-time when they want to work full-time.
There are many lessons from this. But in an election year when so many New York candidates are campaigning on some promise of class warfare, we’d like to hear people start from the obvious: Nothing you do to help workers matters if they don’t have jobs. That includes hiking the minimum wage, mandating paid sick leave and so on.
You’d think that’s just common sense. But not in a city where the Bronx borough president can say, “The notion that any job is better than no job no longer applies” — as he bragged after killing a plan that would have brought a shopping mall to a hard-pressed community.
That attitude helps explain why our state ranks dead last in terms of its business climate, according to the Tax Foundation. Workers have as much interest in changing that as business does. And not just on taxes: Too much regulation and a bloated public sector crimp the ability of our economy to create jobs and opportunity.
Legislation has its role. But on Labor Day, we’ll just note that there’s only one real guarantee that you can provide for your family, send your kids to college and even tell your boss to shove it: a dynamic, growing economy that gives you plenty of options when it comes to jobs.