Happy days are far from here again – when it comes to the recovery of New York’s lagging jobs from the coronavirus pandemic.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget office issued a serious quarterly report that said that New York State would not recover all the jobs lost during the COVID-19 outbreak until 2026.
The report, citing a deteriorating economic picture compared to a few months ago, also acknowledged that New York lags far behind the nation as a whole in post-pandemic job recovery.
“Though the nation has almost recovered all its pandemic-related job losses by June 2022, the state has recovered only 80.1 per cent of its losses,” the quarterly budget report said.
“As a result of declining jobs growth forecasts, the state’s employment is now expected to reach its pre-pandemic levels in 2026.”
State officials previously expected New York to recover all of its pre-pandemic jobs no later than 2025.
New York was the country’s hardest-hit epicenter of the initial COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, which greatly disrupted the economy of the Big Apple. New York City’s hotel and tourism industry, which relies heavily on domestic and global travel, has been particularly affected.
Hochul’s original budget plan, released earlier this year, said the hotel and tourism sector would take longer to recover than other parts of New York’s economy.
Democrat Hochul will face Republican Lee Zeldin in the gubernatorial race this fall. He took over as governor after three-time Democrat Andrew Cuomo resigned last year under threats of impeachment amid a sexual assault scandal.
