Posted on 12/22/2009 3:19:53 AM PST by reaganaut1
High unemployment is spreading in New York City beyond the poorest neighborhoods to once-secure middle-class enclaves, where some residents are falling behind on rent and mortgage payments.
Among the hardest-hit spots are the northern Bronx and southeastern Queens. Both areas have seen unemployment double since the third quarter of 2007, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
"The recovery in the labor market is a long way off and it will be a long time coming to middle-income neighborhoods," said James Parrott, the institute's deputy director and chief economist.
Close to half of all New Yorkers work for small and medium-size businesses, Mr. Parrot said, "and they don't readily recover in a downturn."
[NYC] has shed 144,000 jobs since August 2008, leaving it with an unemployment rate of 10% as of November, on par with the national average. But some pockets are much worse, including neighborhoods that haven't typically experienced such severe joblessness.
The Bronx, with its big public-housing complexes, lower education levels and large unskilled population, long has had the highest unemployment rate in the city.
In the third quarter, the Bronx's jobless rate was 13%, the institute said. But in the northernmost stretch, populated by middle- and working-class families, bordering Westchester County suburbs, unemployment was 12.2% in the third quarter, more than double the rate of two years earlier, the institute found.
Residents, city officials and economists said there have been more foreclosure cases this year in that northern part of the Bronx, as well as an increase in small-business closings, illegal renting of bedrooms and basements, and court petitions by landlords seeking back rent.
On the southeastern strip of Queens, where generations of families have entered the middle class by buying starter homes, unemployment has doubled in the past two years to 12.2%.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
If you look at the site of Fiscal Policy Institute, which conducted the study, you see that their answer is to raise taxes in New York, as if that has not already been tried.
Southeast Queens is not “...largely known as Jamaica”. Jamaica is known as Jamaica, and its in central Queens. Southeast Queens consists mainly of Rosedale, Laurelton and Kennedy Airport. The author is ignorant. If you’re going to write about something, you should know what you’re talking about.
You get what you vote for, ask the people of Michigan.
I forgot Far Rockaway, also part of SE Queens.
Last I looked we’ve got an effective unemployment rate of close to 20% nationwide. It’s hard all over, not just in New York. But have no fear. Our fearless leader is working both day and night to try to rectify the situation. With any luck it won’t go any higher than 30!
God help us, and Merry Christmas to all!
They should thank their liberal rep for making their predicament.
Sorry but who the hell cares?
Yet another sign the Obamunists’ plans for the destruction of the middle-class are working.
It was I. V. Lenin who said, “If you want to eliminate the middle class, grind them between the twin millstones of inflation and taxation.” And, indeed, the Obamnunists are busily readying these two millstones to begin turning in a couple of years. But they’ve found unemployment to be much simpler to implement in the short term, and it’s working quite well, thank you very much! When the Obamunists’ millstones do finally begin to turn, they won’t have nearly as much grinding left to do.
I don’t know who I.V. Lenin was. Sounds more like Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (AKA Lenin). What Lenin forgot though, is that nobody has aspirations of himself or his progeny remaining in the same class. The contradiction of socialism is that it is led by individualists NOT collectivists which leads not to a classless society but to a communist oligarchy that eventually must give way to another elite. Crushing the middle class also retarded Russia’s development for a century. Look at Latin America, it is precisely because the oligarchies destroyed the middle class that they are perpetually behind. The intellectual class does nothing but sit on their asses and fantasize of worlds and societies that can only exists in their sick minds. Lenin did after all die of complications of lead poisoning via a bullet..
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.