Visiting New York City

David Posnett — Sun, 03 May 2020 03:13:07 +0000

I have not been in the city since late February 2020. Much has changed. It is now a ghost town. Nobody rides the subway and there are no cabs. On the bright side, there are plenty of parking spaces and little traffic.

A walk down East 86th street was depressing. Over 3-4 blocks, there were numerous store closures, some temporary and others for good. There was retail space for rent or lease. There was a plea for donations via a Go-Fund-Me website from a restaurant called “Little Frog” addressed to it’s loyal customers. Here are pictures taken on the evening of May 1st:

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You have to ask how long it will take to recover? How many stores will go under? What will happen to real estate prices? What will happen to jobs?

The city is definitely schizophrenic. Less than 24 hours later on a beautiful spring Saturday, everyone it seems was out in Central Park. Not much social distancing here. With or without masks, there were picnics, frisbees, pick up basketball, and couples kissing! Cyclists and joggers crowded the Central Park loop road. Your usual spring weekend in the park. There were so many people that 2 of them actually bumped into me by accident! I have a sneaky feeling that the Coronavirus will be happy to spread again. And I wonder how many of these folks will visit the beaches in the Hamptons on a hot summer weekend.

Jobs? Where are they?

David Posnett — Wed, 02 May 2018 18:08:43 +0000

From: John Tepper Marlin, Ph.D., President, Boissevain Books LLC, Principal, CityEconomist
WHERE ARE THOSE GREAT NEW JOBS FOR LONG ISLAND THAT TRUMP AND ZELDIN PROMISED

These figures were released this morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are for Nassau and Suffolk Counties. March 2018 compared with March 2017 (the numbers are not seasonally adjusted, so you have to use year-over-year monthly comparisons).

Unemployment	4.2%	4.6%	Up .4 of a percentage point
Payroll Jobs	1,482,557	1,464,134	Down 18,423

YOU CAN BE SURE IF THE NUMBERS WERE GOOD, ZELDIN WOULD BE TRUMPETING THEM. BUT THEY ARE NOT GOOD.

NEWSDAY:

Long Island’s unemployment rate rose to 5.1 percent in February, from 4.8 percent in February 2017, state data released Tuesday show. It was the fifth consecutive year-over-year increase since October.

The rate rose in 10 months of 2017 and has been steadily moving away from what is considered full employment, which is 4 percent or below.

The number of employed residents fell by 9,500 last month, compared with a year earlier, to 1.39 million, the lowest for the month since 2015. The number of unemployed Long Islanders rose by 3,300 to 74,300, the Labor Department said. That was the highest for the month since 2015.

Southampton has the worst jobless rates for the entire island!

Trickle down economics = voodoo economics = fool me once, fool me twice…

unemployment – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Visiting New York City

Jobs? Where are they?