New York’s Other New Economy

By William Fronhoefer

"Even after a very long boom that has created a half-million jobs here since November 1992, most of our teens still can't find work," said [Alan Hevesi], who is seeking the democratic mayoral nomination.  

New York’s low youth-employment rate is not the fault of lazy teens, Hevesi said.

-- TIMES ARE LEAN FOR N.Y. TEENS: HELP BIZ HIRE KIDS: HEVESI, by Dan Mangan

New York Post; New York, Mar 26, 2001. [http://pqarchiver.nypost.com/nypost/ Search:Hevesi]

The New York Post recently reported some interesting employment data, data compiled by the office of New York mayoral hopeful Alan Hevesi, City Comptroller.  It seems that joblessness among New York City teenagers is at record highs – some 80% of area teens are unemployed.

The Post finds this puzzling. So does the Comptroller’s Office.  After all, New York City’s economy (unlike upstate New York’s) has been in an almost decade-long boom.  It seems odd that a local economy which is leading the nation in job creation would have so little to offer teens.  Mr. Hevesi does offer one possible explanation, though: "We have had booming growth with high-tech jobs and professional jobs, but we don't have an entry-level job economy."

A fascinating theory.  However, it seems hard to believe that a city which has more restaurants, retail stores and small businesses than any other city in America would be lacking an “entry-level job economy.”  After all, all these brand new high tech workers are presumably eating out, buying clothing and groceries and spending their discretionary income on any number of retail goods.

And what kind of jobs do New York teens do, anyway?  When I was a New York teen, I bussed tables, washed dishes, worked as a sales assistant at a lumberyard and at a pharmacy as well as doing some landscaping work, among other things.  Moreover, I worked those sorts of jobs in the darkest days of the Dinkins mayoral administration, when the city was hemorrhaging all sorts of jobs, taxes were out of control and the high tech boom was years from realization.

No, Alan Hevesi’s explanation is patently false and disingenuous.  But in all fairness to him, it has to be, since he is running for political office. 

Allow me to offer a more plausible theory.

The 2000 Census revealed that there are approximately one million more residents of New York City than there were during the 1990 census.  It’s not because New Yorkers have become remarkably more fertile – it’s because there are hundreds of thousands of recently arrived immigrants, many of whom are illegal.

Now every properly peecee New Yorker has an anecdote about a delivery guy at their local Chinese takeout joint who has a Ph.D. in mathematics or a cabdriver from Bangladesh who got the highest possible score on his country’s Civil Engineering exam.  Let’s relax our judgment for a minute and pretend these stories are absolutely true.  If they are, it simply does not matter, because the vast majority of recent immigrants do not come from the upper echelons of Asian society but from the lowest economic demographics of Central and South America.  They are, for the most part, extremely poorly educated, lack basic English and mathematical skills and are untrained for anything except the most rudimentary unskilled labor.

If you are a native New Yorker, you will notice that certain things in the city have drastically changed.  Your waiter is still a bitter, unemployed actor, but your busboy is no longer a seventeen-year old kid who rolls his eyes when you ask for more butter.  He is a thirty-four year-old man who smiles slightly and shakes his head in incomprehension.  Your moving guy is no longer a sixteen year-old metal-head who discusses the flaws of your stereo system in excruciating detail, he is a tired forty year-old with frightening dental work who, although apologetic when he accidentally breaks your glass end-table top, is utterly unable to explain his company’s policy on damages or supply the number of someone who can.

In effect, the normal job niche for native-born teens in New York has been inundated with workers who, unlike American teens, will work for almost nothing, will work more than part-time during the school year and will not be quitting in three months to go to college.  The effect of this phenomenon on New York teens is quite serious, since, according to Mr. Hevesi: "When teens work, they learn important skills and behaviors that help them build their careers. Working also lets them earn the money many need to go to college or help support their families."

In this we are agreed.  Of course, the adult immigrants who have wrested the traditional teen job market from teens often won’t be helped in building careers, since part of their attractiveness to employers is that they don’t need to be promoted or given raises - they can be immediately replaced by a brand new cholo who has just sneaked across the border.  Few behaviors are being learned by employees now – rather customers are being forced to learn Spanglish so they won’t have to spend fifteen extra minutes explaining themselves every time they shop or grab lunch at a restaurant.  Few of the dollars earned by these workers are going toward college educations and the money that is spent to support families is being sent to various foreign countries – it is not entering the local economy.

And it’s not as if this disappearing employment, which is shortchanging so many native-born teens, is providing the offspring of these workers with golden opportunities.  Hispanic teens are roughly three times as likely as black teens to drop out  of high school and almost six times as likely as white teens to do so.  Additionally, their illegitimacy rate is skyrocketing.

The children of our Gastarbeiter class are hardly making the most of the opportunities that their parents have snatched from native-born teens.

And even if they were, it would be no cause for joy that our own children were being shoved aside.