NYC Unemployment higher than US, up

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO bullish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is just about NYC job cuts -

"Wall Street shed 2,000 jobs in December"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/19/us-wallstreet-jobs-idUSTRE80I24R20120119

"...The drop in the ranks of bankers, traders and brokers will compress the city's tax revenues because Wall Street is the wellspring of its economy.

December's job losses clipped the total number of securities and commodities brokers to 166,900 positions from November, according to the state labor report.

The much bigger overall financial sector laid off 3,400 people in December though this sector typically hires 2,000 people in December, the labor report said...."

SO BULLISH for RE!!!!!!!!

It actually is bullish for landlords, terrible for sellers. Because those who DO have jobs on WS still will be very reluctant to buy in this environment - and with all the restricted comp, perhaps unable to afford the down-payment.

Huh? Bullish for landlords? Splain Lucy

NYC finance sector historically loses 20-25% of its jobs in a recession. This recession, it's been more on the order of 10%, both for finance overall and for the sub-segment of bankers + brokers.

I feel empathy for the 2,000 people who just got laid off, but in general Wall Street has been really well protected by gov't stimulus measures.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

Who cares about real estate, we're all getting rich on the stock market. LOL!

jason, soon nyc will become the content capital of the universe. Jobs in the finance industry will dwindle, resturant workers come and go but, hardly make a significant difference in the residential market. NYC will remain somewhat stable wrt re as long as people still want to live in the city. For this all there need be is modest economic activity and reasonable personal safty.
Nothing drives folks away like personal safety fear.
Buy to invest...I have no idea
Buy to live in long term...hard to go wrong

"NYC finance sector historically loses 20-25% of its jobs in a recession. "
?
splain lucy.

which ones?

I am not sure where that 20-25% figure comes from. That was not the case in 1987, 1994, 1998, 2000, or 2007. My memory does not extend further, but its seems like it came out of someone's ass. Perhaps.

That is one of the least informed/substantiated things I've read from Ali, which is saying a lot. Sounds like it's pulled straight from her ass.

I used to work on Wall Street. And when everything went blooey in 1988, one of the things that we looked back at was the collapse at the end of the go-go sixties, when the commission structure changed. Because that was when the old guys remembered thinking that the world was going to end.

And in both those cycles -- end of '60s and end of '80s -- the prediction was that "all the Wall Street jobs are going to go away."

And I remember looking it up, and finding that they just didn't. If you look at BLS statistics, the peak-to-trough drop in Wall Street employment is remarkably consistent across recessions. The cuts bottom out at a certain level, and then the cycle starts up again.

I think this even worked for the Great Depression too, but I'm less sure about that.

However, you can see for yourself the wake of the last breaking bubble, the end of the dot-com boom, in the most recent employment data here: http://labor.ny.gov/stats/lscesmaj.shtm

Peak-to-trough, Wall Street employment dropped just under 20%.

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

pulled straight from a well informed ass that does their home work.
Amazing what you learn from the oddest places.

ali, is that 20% the 10% you referenced in your earlier post or a different statistic?

Columbiacounty are you incapable of clicking the link Ali provided and looking it up on your own?

I am still calling BS. The webpage only has data going back to 1990, and whether you look broadly at "financial services" or more narrowly at the capital markets categories ("securities, commidities, and other financial contracts and related activities") there is nothing close to a 20% decline, YOY, multi-year, whatever.

Employment in the narrow and broad categories climbs from 1990-2000, and is down about 5% from 2000.

If you are SUPER narrow and do "investment banking a securities dealing" then you might get close - but that leaves out lots of what normal people think of as "Wall Street" - i.e. asset management, hedge funds, exchanges, private equity, commodity traders, private wealth/banking/PCS OTC derivative brokers, FX traders, etc, etc.

the loss of jobs is just part of the story---its the loss of income for those who are still employed and the fear of losing even more income in the future.

rough life, living every day in fear.

In the "securities, commidities, and other financial contracts and related activities" category (which is quoted as Wall Street jobs by the press), the absolute peak-to-trough from 2000 to 2003 was a 20.4% drop. From 2007 to 2010, it was 16.5%.

That said, I am guessing the 2010 trough will be broken this year, which sits 4.5% away.

yes 2009-2010 was artificially help up by government bailouts. those are clearly going away.

"the absolute peak-to-trough from 2000 to 2003 was a 20.4% drop. From 2007 to 2010, it was 16.5%. "

I did not bother to do each month, I only did the annual averages for each year. And the average employment never dropped by even half that much. I think the annual average smooths things out and paints a more accurate picture.

But in any event its obvious that for banks with $50B in assets or more, profitability will be lower post D-F and Basel 3, so 20% is possible even as an annual average.

Ok so I guess in the most broad "financial services" catagory employment is not down anything close to 20%, but it looks like it will be close if you narrowly define it:

"...In the US, the Office of the New York State Comptroller forecasts that, by the end of this year, Wall Street will have shed 32,000 jobs since the beginning of 2008, a net reduction of 17%.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates that some 27,000 jobs will have gone across the City of London in the past year, a fall of about 9% in 2011, and 19% from its peak..."

http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2012-01-23/say-it-quietly-there-have-not-been-enough-job-cuts?ref=email_37043

Sounds like a rehash of this report from Oct 2011:

http://www.osc.state.ny.us/osdc/rpt12-2012.pdf

I think that's for the "Securs., Commod. Contr., and Othr. Finan. Invs. and Relat. Activs." category, not for the 3x-larger (employment-wise) "Financial Activities" category.

Peak employment was 190.7K mid-2008. We are now at 166.9K. The forecast was for 155.5K by year-end 2012.