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After locking down New York, Gov. Cuomo forecasts state's decimated job market won't recover from COVID-19 until 2025
Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

After locking down New York, Gov. Cuomo forecasts state's decimated job market won't recover from COVID-19 until 2025

He played a major role in this

New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has bad news for his people: It will be literally years before the state's job market recovers from the hit it took during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The massive loss of jobs the Empire State experienced came largely as a result of COVID-19 lockdown policies instituted at the hands of the left-wing executive.

What did Cuomo say?

In his annual budget plan submitted this week, Cuomo made it clear that there are rough times ahead for New York's workers.

His subjects should not expect the state's employment levels to recover to pre-pandemic levels until sometime in 2025, he stated in his "Economic Revenue and Outlook" outline of his $192.9 billion budget.

The document noted that actions taken by the government to "slow the spread" of the virus brought the economy to a stop, with nearly 2 million jobs lost in New York alone. Though there has been some recovery in the employment numbers, things are still way behind where they should be: November's employment levels were 10.3% below pre-pandemic levels.

And the state has fallen behind the national pace.

The measures taken to slow the spread of COVID-19 brought the State economy to a virtual standstill in March and April of 2020. More than 1.9 million jobs were lost in these two months alone. Based on the most recent Current Employment Statistics (CES) seasonally adjusted data, almost half of those jobs have been recovered as of this publication. However, the November level of employment remains 10.3 percent below its February (pre-pandemic) level. As illustrated in the figure below, the pace of the national labor market recovery initially outperformed that of the State. With the easing of the most stringent phase of the New York lockdown on pause in May, the State initiated a staged reopening in accordance with Centers for Disease Control (CDC)-issued guidelines. The national labor market made a strong and immediate comeback, adding 9.3 million jobs in the three months through July, or 41.8 percent of jobs lost. That compares to the 533,000 jobs New York recovered over the same period, or 27.4 percent of jobs lost.

Image source: budget.ny.gov, "FY 2022 Economic and Review Outlook" screenshot

With Cuomo's orders killing restaurant dining and colder weather making any sort of outdoor dining options for most New York eateries not possible, the recovery of the labor market has suffered even more.

The governor's office now predicts job growth to be a mere 5.4% for 2021, after declining 9.9% in 2020.

Which means, according to Cuomo's own budget outline, the state of New York should not expect to reach its pre-pandemic employment levels until 2025.

With the onset of colder autumn weather, and virus-safe practices such as outdoor dining no longer feasible in many areas of the State, the labor market recovery has since slowed to a trickle, as the State added only 29,500 total jobs and 36,300 private sector jobs in November. With COVID-19 transmission intensifying across both the State and the nation, job growth is expected to slow even further over the winter months until vaccines become widely available. Job growth of 5.4 percent is now projected for 2021, following a decline of 9.9 percent for 2020. Private sector job growth of 6.2 percent is projected for 2021, following an estimated decline of 11.1 percent for 2020. These projections compare to national declines of 5.7 percent for total employment and 6.2 percent for private employment for 2020, followed by growth of 2.7 percent for total employment and 3.4 percent for private employment for 2021. New York State employment is not expected to reach its pre-pandemic peak until 2025.

And, as the New York Post noted, things are even worse in New York City, where unemployment is still 12.2% below February's pre-pandemic levels.

The Cuomo budget out noted that Gotham has recouped only 39.4% of jobs lost during the COVID outbreak in the spring, which, the Post reported, contrasts significantly with the more than 60% recovery in the surrounding Long Island and Westchester-Rockland-Orange counties.

Image source: budget.ny.gov, "FY 2022 Economic and Review Outlook" screenshot

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