Neil deMause

With the NBA lockout almost ready to swallow the regular season, I look at the evidence for what the impact will be on local economies in NBA cities. The answer: not a whole heckuva lot.

After another fruitless round of talks between the players and owners, it looks like the start of the NBA season—if not the whole thing—will soon be wiped out. It’s not only hoops fans who are anxious at the prospect of a lost season. By all accounts, cities with NBA franchises have also been cringing in terror. With the start of the season a month away, we’ve already seen predictions of a “devastating” impact on Charlotte, N.C., businesses, a $55 million loss to the city of Indianapolis, and certain disaster for sports bars in Portland, Ore… [read more]

With unemployment still through the roof, are job training programs just preparing people for jobs that don’t exist?

As the economy threatens to sink into a double-dip recession, pressure is growing for federal, state, and local governments to do something about the 16 million Americans who remain out of work. One solution popular with politicians of all stripes—and with both business and labor groups—has been job training programs to close the gap between employers’ needs and workers’ skills.

“Even though a lot of folks are looking for work, there are a lot of companies that are actually also looking for skilled workers; there’s a mismatch that we can close,” President Obama said in June in presenting a community college program to teach manufacturing skills. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg has launched a series of job training initiatives, most recently as part of his new Young Men’s Initiative to aid black and Latino teens—a cause to which he gave $30 million of his own pocket money… [read more]

Nouriel Roubini takes to Twitter to debunk last week’s rosy employment report, and I look at what it all means for New York City’s job picture:

Between the stock market nosedive and the S&P downgrade (based on a $2 trillion math error), last week wasn’t a great one for the U.S. economic outlook. There was, however, one glimmer of hope: U.S. employers reported they added an above-expected 117,000 jobs in July, as the unemployment rate fell from 9.2 percent to 9.1 percent.

Unfortunately, there to throw cold water on that hope was NYU professor Nouriel Roubini — best known as the man who predicted the housing bubble… [read more]

Next up fo New York City after the defeat of a paid sick leave bill: a proposal to require decent wages for employees at development projects that get city subsidies.

The battle lines are all too familiar: A worker-rights bill backed by a broad coalition of unions and progressive politicians, but opposed by major business interests. A majority of the City Council on board as sponsors, but no commitment from the Council speaker. Dueling economic impact studies conducted by the two opposing sides, with each insisting that the other’s is inadequate.

After the Council’s long-awaited bill to extend sick leave to all private employees in New York City crashed and burned last fall once Council Speaker Christine Quinn declared that it would be too harmful to businesses during tough economic times, many of the same players turned their sights on a proposed “living wage” bill for recipients of city development subsidies… [read more]

A multi-year campaign to require that all employees in New York City receive paid sick time (which I first wrote about last fall) was quashed in October by city council speaker Christine Quinn. What happened, and what does it mean for worker rights and the city economy?

Last winter, it seemed all but inevitable that New York City would become the latest city to pass a law mandating that all city businesses provide paid sick leave to their employees.

A coalition of worker-rights groups, including Make the Road New York, the Working Families Party and the legal advocates A Better Balance had lined up to push for the legislation; a veto-proof majority of 37 city councilmembers had not just endorsed but co-sponsored a bill that would require at least five days of annual leave for all workers. And with the nation in the grip of swine-flu panic, visions of restaurant cooks showing up sick for work had even some small business owners admitting that some kind of sick-leave law was probably inevitable… [read more]

Home health care aides are both the fastest-growing job sector in the economy, and the last job anybody would want:

Though unemployment remains north of 9 percent in the “post-recession” city economy, there are a few bright spots for New Yorkers seeking work. If you’re a computer programmer or network systems analyst, for example, the state labor department projects that businesses will still be hiring for the foreseeable future. Or you could take advantage of the number one growth industry: home health aides, which are expected to add a whopping 5,230 jobs a year statewide. By 2016, according to the state’s projections, nearly 300,000 New Yorkers will be employed as home health caregivers, either as health aides or in the related field of “personal and home care,” which includes caregivers for the elderly or infirm who don’t handle medication.

For those without advanced technical skills thinking of a career change, there’s only one problem: Though demand for home care aides—who do everything from cooking and cleaning for home-bound patients to bathing and dressing them—is soaring, wages remain dismal… [read more]

My first article for the relaunched City Limits, about the doomsday budgets proposed for New York city and state, is up. (It’s actually the second article I wrote for them, but is running first — I blame the suits at Fox.)

Economists say the nation’s recession is technically over, but whether or not the economy is actually on the mend, the recession’s impact on New York City and state budgets is only just beginning. Over the last three months, Gov. Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg have mapped out a set of austerity budgets that would slash billions in spending – with many of the reductions coming from education and social services.

This year marks a watershed for both City Hall and Albany, but for different reasons, says James Parrott, chief economist at the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute, which earlier this month issued extensive briefings on both the state and city budgets… [read more]

There’s nothing like getting sick to make you appreciate the hazards of getting sick:

I caught a cold last week. No, it was not the swine flu. Though my head felt like it was going to explode, and I ran through enough tissues to deforest the Amazon, I was missing the two signature symptoms of the H1N1 virus — high fever and a racking cough — so I can rest assured I was laid low by some other, less headline-worthy bug…. [read more]

It’s swine flu season, which means all thoughts turn to what to do when your job won’t let you call in sick:

As the H1N1 swine flu virus starts its second major sweep through the U.S., business owners are bracing for the impact of a worse-than-usual flu season on their workforces. That’s reviving debate on a contentious issue: What kind of sick leave should companies offer employees — and should it be mandated by law?

“On the one hand, you have all of our top officials saying, ‘Do the responsible thing. If you’re sick, stay home,’” says Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group that is pushing for paid sick leave laws. “You have advice from the Centers for Disease Control on exactly how many days you should stay home, and how many days we need to keep kids at home. And at the same time, we have a country where almost half the workforce doesn’t have a single paid sick day.”… [read more]

The D.C. sick-leave bill saga finally reaches its denouement, I hope:

Details of Washington, D.C’s. new law requiring all city businesses to provide paid sick leave to their employees were finally released this week, clarifying the last-minute amendments to the legislation that will exempt recent hires and certain classes of workers, as well as allowing hardship exceptions for employers… [read more]

For those interested in the issue, it’s also worth checking out the FSB discussion page on sick-leave legislation, which is surprisingly thoughtful as online forums go.