Bronx still leads state's unemployed

Unemployment rates are certainly better than what they were a year ago, but getting a job in New York City continues to be much more difficult than it is anywhere else in the state.

The city’s uemployment rate in September was 8.9 percent — by far the highest of any other metro in New York. In fact, only Buffalo-Niagara Falls and Elmira even come close, and even then their 4.7 percent unemployment is half of that of New York City’s.

The biggest driver of that rate is the Bronx — the only county that still maintained a double-digit unemployment rate in September, according to the state labor department, at 12.4 percent.

Brooklyn’s rate was high, too, but at 9.2 percent. Staten Island reported unemployment at a rate of 8 percent, while Queens was 8.6 percent and Manhattan 6.9 percent.

Yates County — with a population of less than 25,000 just south of Rochester — had the state’s best unemployment rate at 3.3 percent. There are more than 15 other counties also below 4 percent unemployment, with Columbia and Saratoga counties not far behind Yates.

But the city is slowly recovering from the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, unemployment was 14.7 percent citywide, with Buffalo as well as the Mid-Hudson group of Orange, Rockland and Westchester counties anywhere close at 6.9 percent.

de Blasio creates Pay Equity Cabinet

Mayor Bill de Blasio may have just weeks left in office, but he’s decided to ensure his successor always has equal pay on his mind by establishing a new Pay Equity Cabinet that will keep such issues a priority for the executive office.

“Pay equity is critical to the safety and overall well-being of the most marginalized and vulnerable workers in our city,” de Blasio said, in a release. “It can make the difference between having one job or two, or between stable housing or none.”

de Blasio’s cabinet intends to use the intersection of gender, race and tenure to address factors that contribute to pay inequity across the city. Starting in November, senior leadership within the city government will be invited to join the cabinet, and working groups will be formed to begin making recommendations for the immediate and long-term strategies needed to tackle wage disparities, de Blasio’s office said.

Some of the ideas the mayor would like the cabinet to address early on are:

• A “blind recruitment” process across government agencies to remove identifiers related to race and gender.

•A uniform policy with clear criteria for promotions and guidance on how to reduce salary inequities for discretionary roles that are the same or comparable.

• A third-party evaluation of civil service titles, starting with positions that have discrepancies of $10,000 or more between race or gender.

• A higher wage floor for lower-wage, entry-level frontline positions through collective bargaining.

New York City was the first municipality to institute a salary history ban, making it illegal for public and private employers to ask about an applicant’s salary history during the hiring process. These measures were designed to help break the cycle of workplace inequity de Blasio says perpetuates lower salaries for women and minorities.

Hochul ends state worker hiring freeze

One region that is looking for new employees now is Albany after Gov. Kathy Hochul lifted the hiring freeze put in place by her predecessor at the start of the pandemic.

The move comes as state coffers now have more than $2 billion more than state officials had expected. More than 10,000 positions across the state were left unfilled — primarily through attrition — since March 2020.

Originally published Oct. 28 2021