New York City Unemployment Rate Exceeds 10%

New York City’s unemployment rate jumped to 10.3 percent in August as the number of city
residents unable to find work rose to a record high of 415,800, state officials said on Thursday.

The city’s unemployment rate, up from 9.5 percent in July, is higher than the national
rate of 9.7 percent and much higher than the 8 percent reported for the rest of the state, the State Labor Department’s figures show. Gov. David A. Paterson and other state officials said that the new data emphasized how the financial crisis has devastated the financial services industry that was the main engine of the city’s growth in the last boom.

The recession may be over for the rest of the nation, as Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has suggested, Mr. Paterson said, but New York is still caught in its throes.

“What he’s saying about the national recession doesn’t apply to us,” Mr. Paterson said at a news conference at the Borough of Manhattan Community college in Lower Manhattan. New York is going to face “tough sledding” for another year or more, he said.

The city’s unemployment rate was the highest since May 1993, the labor department said. The state’s unemployment rate rose to 9 percent in August, from 8.6 percent in July, remaining below the national rate. But the number of unemployed people in the state still rose to a record of 874,300, the figures show.


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