NYC Unemployment

Found a short, interesting article titled "A Localized Breakdown of Joblessness in New York" about the unemployment rate for all of New York City, including a neighborhood by neighborhood breakdown. Of course there are myriad dynamics that have caused the unemployment distribution in NYC (and which may affect the validity of these numbers), but nevertheless its good to have a gauge of which areas are weathering the recession better than others.

The Recession's impact on Teenagers

As we enter 2010 an embark upon a year of fresh starts, there are certain things we cannot leave behind; the most obvious being the financial woes of 2009. In this post I want to breifly explore the recession's impact upon a specific demographic: teenagers. Although teenagers have been aware of the weakened economy, in many cases they haven't been primarily (directly)affected. For instance, many parents and households have cut back their expenditures, thus decreasing the amout of money that they pass down to their children in the form of disposable income. Apart from these types of secondary (indirect) affects, the recession hasn't been extremely impactful up to this point amongst this demographic (outside of the effect on finding employment) aside from being a topic of discussion, and the commonly heard colloquialism "its a recession." However, a recent article titled, Recession? Teenagers Get It, and Are Cutting Back, details how the recession has finally had a primary impact amongst the youngest consumer group. According to the article, "Sales are down sharply in recent months at nearly every major retail chain catering to teenagers, and interviews with teenagers suggest that the reasons go beyond their own difficulty finding part-time jobs." Additionally, teens are starting to understand the proportional relationship between price and quality. The idea that a $30 high quality shirt in most situations is a better buy than purchasing three low quality $10 shirts. Teens have also been impacted by the recession as "the teenage unemployment rate is at a record high, more than 26 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to an overall unemployment rate of 10 percent." Bottom-line is that the recession has officially hit everyone, however, this is more of a formality than a fearsome development since teenagers don't move the economy. Nonetheless the article provides interesting food for thought.