Unemployment in the city that never sleeps

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/business/international/ultimatums-will-only-aggravate-greeces-problems.html

On July 16th, The New York Times released an article reflecting on the current unemployment situation in New York City. New York City has always been an important city in the United States; not only is it the city that never sleeps, a really cool place to visit, but it is a buzzing center of many growing industries and corporations.

According to Patrick McGeehan, the unemployment rates in NYC are the lowest than they have been in 7 years; the last time being the month that the Lehman Brothers investment bank failed in 2008. It is now 6.1 percent, while the state of New York dropped to 5.7 percent, another low since 2008. The state percentage is a lower number just because the sheer amount of people who move to NYC every year. This is really helping the economy because not only are less people unemployed, but there are more people to help with the booming industries that are boosting the economy.

The reason for this wonderful drop in unemployment is jobs. I know that seems like a simplistic answer, but it is the one I find to be most true. The city is growing at an exponential rate and with that comes many jobs. McGeehan states that NYC has generated about 7,200 jobs just in the past year just for the boom in business. The jobs go towards health care, the rise of education, and the biggest business in NYC, the people to please the tourists. I, myself, was in New York City a couple of years ago; I noticed at how many industries there are just to cater to the needs of tourists. Even Wall Street has increased its jobs by 3 percent- 5,500 jobs. Another large source of jobs is coming from private-sector jobs, which has gone up 3.1 percent in the past year, adding 24,200 jobs. And it has reached the new high of 7.8 million jobs.

What makes me sad about this article is that there are still so many people without jobs in our country. In New York alone, there are 539,000 people who can’t seem to get a job. Usually our government gives a unemployment insurance benefit to those in need, but the issue with most of these people is that they have been unemployed for too long and they no longer qualify, resulting in only about one-fifth of the 539,000 receiving those benefits.

          This great step is changing so many people’s lives, and it shows that we are recovering from this financial crisis. There are a lot of people who still need help, but if the numbers mean anything, then we are going in the right direction.