"The region’s unemployment rate has grown a full percentage point in the past year, reflecting the economy’s importance in the upcoming election season.
Unemployment in the Utica-Rome metropolitan area rose from 4.2 percent from July 2007 to 5.2 percent in this July, according to state labor statistics released Thursday. Year-over-year figures are considered useful by economists for comparisons because seasonal factors can skew month-to-month numbers."
Rising unemployment and a falling average household income is a one-two punch that doesn't bode well for the area, particularly when our state politicians are making it increasingly clear they have no intention of actually cutting New York's bloated budget.
But it wasn’t all bad news.
There were job gains made in the educational and health sector -- a jump of 400 jobs from last year to this year.
That sure is some great news...until you realize that the educational and health fields are driven almost entirely by the expenditure of public dollars. It's not a coincidence that the unions representing those sectors are the ones howling the loudest about cutting state spending. Given their political power there's not a snowball's chance in hell that New York will do anything but continue to raise taxes for the foreseeable future.
