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  Unemployment high among black NYers
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Last Editedkal  Jul 18, 2009 12:57pm
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News DateSaturday, July 18, 2009 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionNEW YORK -- Black New Yorkers have been hit particularly hard by the economic downturn, according to a new report that says their unemployment rate has swelled disproportionately during the recession.

The report released Monday by City Comptroller William Thompson Jr., a Democrat running for mayor, says the black unemployment rate in New York City was 14.7 percent for the first quarter of 2009. For the same period in 2008, it was 5.7 percent.

Nationally for that same period, the unemployment rate among blacks was slightly lower than the city's rate, at 13.1 percent. But it rose in the second quarter to 14.9 percent, according to Bureau of Labor statistics.

Unemployment across all ethnic groups in New York City has gone up as the local economic picture worsened; the city's overall rate for the first quarter of 2008 was 4.9 percent, growing to 8.1 percent for that period in 2009.

The comptroller's chief economist, Frank Braconi, said it wasn't entirely clear why the black unemployment rate rose so much more.

One theory is that the retail sector has suffered substantially during the recession and that a high number of retail jobs are often held by black and Hispanic workers. The Hispanic rate went from 6.4 to 9.3 percent.

Another is that even though blacks are underrepresented on Wall Street, which has seen huge job losses since the meltdown last year, they also lost those jobs disproportionately.

"In all truth, we don't have all the answers to this pattern," Braconi said.

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