Google Blog – 12.16.21
For a city that never sleeps, New York City became eerily quiet when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year. The city’s unemployment rate jumped from 3.8% to 20% between April and May 2020, leaving more than 570,000 New Yorkers without work. While the unemployment rate has decreased since the pandemic’s peak, at approximately 9.4% it is still nearly three times higher than pre-COVID 19 and nearly twice the national average. Further, employment cuts and new hiring have not been evenly felt across industries; while the tech industry boomed throughout the pandemic, the lights on Broadway remained dark for months and small businesses across the city continued to struggle to stay afloat. New York City needed help.