Patrick McGeehan writes in today’s New York Times -”New York City’s unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent in November, as professional services like law and accounting firms hired more workers after many months of cutting jobs, the State Labor Department said Thursday…

Indeed, there still were slightly more than 400,000 city residents unable to find jobs last month, according to the state’s figures, which were adjusted to account for seasonal fluctuations. But that was the lowest total recorded since July, according to James Brown, an analyst with the Labor Department.

Employers in the city added about 10,700 jobs in October, but that was less than half the average increase in employment in the last 10 Novembers, Mr. Brown said. Some of that gain came in the retail sector, where stores have been adding to their holiday staffs more slowly and in smaller numbers than usual.

For the last few months, though, the city’s labor force has shrunk, suggesting that some people have given up looking for jobs, said James Parrott, chief economist for the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research group. The number of city residents with jobs has barely changed this fall, but the situation would be worse if the federal government had not pumped so much money into the economy through the stimulus program, he said.”

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