New York City Jobless Rate at 10.6%; State at 9% (Update1)

January 21, 2010, 02:58 PM EST
By Henry Goldman
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- New York City’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate jumped to 10.6 percent in December, the highest since 1993, the state Labor Department reported.
New York state’s jobless rate matched its highest in 26 years, reaching 9 percent in December, 0.4 percentage points more than in November. Unemployed residents in the state increased to 868,600 from 832,200.
The city and state continue to lose jobs in areas including financial activities and business and professional services, while employment increased in education, health care and tourism, said James Brown, principal economist for the labor department.
“We won’t see unemployment trending down month to month until the second half of 2010 at the earliest,” Brown said.
The city’s unemployment rate was 10 percent in November and 7 percent in December 2008. It last reached 10.6 percent in March 1993, according to the labor department. The rate hit 11.7 percent in September 1992, its highest since January 1976, under the department’s current method for measuring the statistic.
The national jobless rate was 10 percent in December.
--Editors: Stacie Servetah, Mark Tannenbaum