(BN) NYC Comptroller Sees 400,000 Jobless By 2010, Most Since 1993

NYC Comptroller Sees 400,000 Jobless By 2010, Most Since 1993 2009-07-13 19:20:04.297 GMT By Henry Goldman July 13 (Bloomberg) -- New York City’s unemployment rate will reach 9.5 percent by 2010, leaving 400,000 jobless for the first time since 1993, city Comptroller William Thompson said. Thompson, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to challenge Mayor Michael Bloomberg this year, said... [more]

NYC Comptroller Sees 400,000 Jobless By 2010, Most Since 1993 2009-07-13 19:20:04.297 GMT By Henry Goldman July 13 (Bloomberg) -- New York City’s unemployment rate will reach 9.5 percent by 2010, leaving 400,000 jobless for the first time since 1993, city Comptroller William Thompson said. Thompson, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination to challenge Mayor Michael Bloomberg this year, said the number of unemployed New Yorkers more than doubled to 361,100 in May from 169,700 in February 2008. By 2010, the jobless tally will swell to the most in more than 15 years, he said. “The severity of the current recession raises fears that the city’s job losses will match or exceed those of previous downturns,” Thompson said in a statement accompanying a report on the city’s economy. The mayor, a political independent seeking a third term on the Republican and Independence Party ballot lines, has said his citywide economic plan helped place 10,500 city residents in jobs in the first six months of this year, a 26 percent increase over the same period of 2008. “Last year, we provided free training to more New Yorkers and placed more of them in jobs than ever before,” Bloomberg said during his regular Sunday radio address, referring to the city’s “Workforce1 Career Centers,” which provide training and job-placement counseling in each of the city’s five boroughs. Although Thompson didn’t challenge these job-placement assertions, he said the mayor exaggerated when he said a $174.4 million federally-funded infrastructure contract to rehabilitate ramps at the St. George Ferry Terminal on Staten Island would create 4,865 jobs. “They will no way approximate the exaggerated number of jobs claimed by your administration,” Thompson wrote in a July 12 letter to the mayor. “It is a disservice to the public to publish such an inflated statistic and then claim it as an accomplishment.” Second Most New York City’s unemployment rose a full percentage point to 9 percent in May compared with April, the second-biggest jump in the past 33 years after February’s record, the state Labor Department reported June 18. The city has lost 108,000 jobs since August 2008, according to Thompson’s report. Seventy percent of the increase in unemployment between the first quarters of 2008 and 2009 affected men. Among African-Americans, the jobless rate more than doubled to 14.7 percent from 5.7 percent, the report found. Between March 1 and May 31, the city’s income tax withholding, an indicator of worker earnings, fell 3.8 percent from the same period of 2008, Thomson’s report said. General city sales tax collections declined 7.8 percent for the first five months of 2009, compared with the same period in 2008. The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP. For Related News and Information: Economic statistics: ECST New York City news: TNYC New York government news: TNI NY GOV New York municipal bonds: TNI MUN NY [less]