NYC Added 58,000 Jobs in a Year. Most of the Growth Was Low-Wage Health Care — and College Grads Under 28 Are Now More Likely to Be Out of Work Than Peers Without Degrees -- The Dissent

A CUNY Economic Studies Group analysis finds NYC unemployment at 5.4% in May — above pre-pandemic levels — as new job growth skews toward low-wage home health care and a first-ever reversal leaves young college graduates more unemployed than same-age workers without degrees.

New York City's unemployment rate stood at 5.4% in May — above its 4.1% pre-pandemic floor and higher than a year earlier — even as the city added roughly 58,000 net new jobs over the past twelve months, according to a June 24 labor market analysis by CUNY Economic Studies Group economists Khaled Eltokhy and James Orr.

The headline growth figure, 1.2% year-over-year, outpaces the national 0.3% and New York State's 0.4%. But the sector breakdown tells a different story about what kind of work is actually being created.

Healthcare and Social Assistance, the city's largest employment sector at more than one million workers, accounted for about 23,000 of those new positions. Eltokhy and Orr note that most were in "relatively low-paying home health care and individual and family services" — the sector of the care economy where wages are lowest and union density has historically been hardest to build. Finance and Insurance, by contrast, added 6,000 jobs concentrated in securities as Wall Street profits hit a record $65 billion last year. Professional and Business Services added roughly 14,000 jobs. Retail Trade and Accommodation and Food Service — where many of the city's hourly workers punch in — were essentially flat and both remain below pre-pandemic employment levels.

The sharpest data point in the report is a reversal among young workers. In March, the unemployment rate for NYC college graduates aged 22 to 27 crossed above the rate for young workers without degrees — an inversion that hadn't held before. Nationally, the rate for recent college grads reached 5.6% by the end of last year, more than a full point above the overall rate. Eltokhy and Orr point to rising AI adoption in entry-level professional tasks and heightened economic policy uncertainty as possible drivers of the hiring slowdown at the top of the credentials ladder.

Federal job losses tied to DOGE workforce reductions also weighed on city and state employment totals over the same period.