Ten-percent unemployment be damned, New York City is still successfully placing welfare recipients in jobs. But what kind of jobs?

The most remarkable thing about the job placement trend chart posted on the city Human Resources Administration website each month is what it doesn’t do.

Unlike so many other charts of economic indicators over the past two years, there is no post-Lehman plunge. Instead, the line—marking the number of city public assistance recipients who’ve reported finding at least half-time work each month over the past four years—bounces up and down, but is remarkably steady: The number of New Yorkers who left welfare for work in December 2009 was actually higher than in December 2006, when the city unemployment rate was a record low 4.3 percent… [read more]