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New York State’s unemployed workers will soon see some relief from the federal coronavirus relief bill passed on December 21, 2020. The bill provides $300/week in enhanced unemployment compensation (FPUC). It also extends Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) for another 11 weeks. In October and November of 2020, New York’s unemployment rate stood at 10 percent, with over 800,000 unemployed workers. Those most impacted by layoffs include Black workers (at 14 percent unemployed) and Hispanic and Asian workers (both at 13 percent unemployed). Comparatively, 7 percent of white workers were unemployed.  Immigrant workers, a category defined as [...]

Governor Cuomo supports reducing state spending citing revenue shortfalls that have been fueled by the economic recession that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. Reduced or eliminated state funding could mean losing public sector jobs that employ workers in communities statewide. This loss would disproportionately impact women and Black workers who constitute the majority of public sector employees.  Historically, the public sector has been an essential employer for women and people of color. Public sector employment has offered a stable path into the middle class with regulated [...]

December 2020 The monthly jobs report from the U.S. Department of Labor reflected the pandemic’s continuing impact on the job market and the economy. A triad of trouble included job growth remaining slow for the fifth straight month, employers scaling back hiring last month, and a stubbornly high unemployment rate of 6.7%, a slight decrease from October’s 6.9%  New York State’s latest jobs report won’t be released until the end of December but looking at the last available report from October makes evident our state follows the same trend [...]

The coronavirus pandemic has hurt us all. It has harmed our physical and mental health and economic well-being. As of September 24, 2020, COVID-19 has sickened over 7.2 million Americans and killed more than 207,000. The pandemic has harmed our economy, causing large-scale business shutdowns, which were ordered to protect public health. Tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and incomes because of the pandemic, resulting in record-high unemployment rates and a rising need for services in New York State and beyond. Initially, job [...]