Sam Levin

Mayor Mike Bloomberg touring the NYU-Poly Varick Street Incubator this morning.

​In today's New-York-City-is-the-best-place-in-the-universe news, Mike Bloomberg has for us the latest success story for the Big Apple: its small business start-ups.

In line with the theme of many of the mayor's events so far this year -- promoting innovation in fashion, in film and television (with Gossip Girl!), in the Bronx , and, you know, just in general, innovation all the time -- Bloomberg held a news conference this morning to pat himself on the back for all he and his city agencies have done to help small businesses get their start, create jobs, and attract entrepreneurs to New York City.

Speaking at the NYU-Poly Varick Street Incubator this morning, Bloomberg, standing in front of a backdrop with the words "City of Innovation" written all over it (HE LIKES INNOVATION, GUYS!), Bloomberg -- after briefly touring the incubator's swanky offices -- told reporters that the city's efforts over the last three years have paid off.

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Sam Levin

New School professor Teresa Ghilarducci and City Comptroller John Liu at the New School today.

​City Comptroller John Liu, staying focused on official business and not his ongoing campaign finance controversy, unveiled a new pension plan this morning designed to target what he says is a growing retirement crisis in New York City.

Here's the problem, according to Liu, an expected 2013 mayoral candidate, who has partnered with the New School on this effort: Because benefits from Social Security average only about $1,200 per month, many rely on employer-sponsored retirement plans to supplement their income as they get older. But in New York City, between 2000 and 2009, the percentage of employers that sponsor retirement plans for their employees fell from 48% to 40%, such that a growing group of New Yorkers are at risk of facing great economic hardship when they retire. More than one-third of households in which the head is nearing retirement will have to rely almost entirely on Social Security income. Some will not be able to retire at all due to low assets.

Liu also pointed to reports that the number of elderly people in the city's homeless shelters has shot up to 55% over the last ten years, with half of that increase taking place over the last two years alone.

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Sam Levin

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn at City Hall today.

​Some employers are sending a clear message through their job postings to those who most need work: If you're unemployed, stay away.

But it may be a bit more difficult for employers in New York City to reject the unemployed, if legislation introduced today at City Hall passes. This legislation would prohibit employers from using a person's job status in hiring decisions and would ban "help-wanted" ads from stating that the unemployed will not be considered and shouldn't bother applying.

The legislation basically says that rejecting unemployed applicants for a job because they are currently unemployed is a form of discrimination that makes it difficult for those who lost their jobs during the tough economy to find much-needed work again.

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Sam Levin

Mayor Mike Bloomberg announces library partnership, alongside Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, left.

​Yes, books and reading and anything that involves words on actual paper are totally screwed. But that doesn't mean New York City libraries aren't valuable!

That was kind of the message behind Mayor Mike Bloomberg's announcement this morning that he is expanding the city's efforts to help unemployed New Yorkers find jobs through partnerships with public libraries.

"A lot of people...say, 'What do you need libraries for? After all, books can be online. You don't have to go any place,' but that's much too parochial a view of what libraries do," Bloomberg said at a press conference this morning at the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza. "Libraries do a lot of things. I think this is another example of the potential to use libraries for people that are intellectually curious, people that need one-on-one services, people that don't know where to go," Bloomberg said.

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​Finally, some genuinely good news to celebrate: the U.S. Department of Labor's monthly job market snapshot says that the national unemployment rate has fallen to 8.3 percent, the lowest it has been in three years. January saw 243,000 jobs added to the market, mostly in business services, labor and hospitality, and manufacturing.

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​The American workforce added about 200,000 jobs over December, doubling November's rate of job creation. The Wall Street Journal reports, "The new jobs were scattered over a range of industries, including manufacturing, retail, and even the battered construction sector," and "the sector that added the most jobs was transportation and warehousing, which was up 50,000." While the numbers look good, experts warn that it may be a temporary bump, as many of the jobs created in the aforementioned transportation and warehousing sector were likely holiday-related and may be unsustainable. [WSJ]

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​Donald Trump spoke to SmartMoney recently and revealed some things of potential interest to the career-interested layperson. For one, though he's 65, he's planning to stick around for a long time, work-wise: "My father, who worked until he passed away at 93, used to always say, 'to retire is to expire.' And I feel the same way. I love what I'm doing - and when you love what you're doing, you don't retire."

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​American employers added jobs in September, but not nearly enough to spur optimism. The New York Times reports there was a net growth of 103,000 jobs last month. Interestingly, "about a third of the jobs added by the private sector last month were actually 45,000 Verizon workers who had been on strike during August and were simply returning to work." The unemployment rate held steady at 9.1%, with 14 million Americans searching for work. [NYT]

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​There's nothing like a truly terrible idea to make a subpar idea seem marginally decent, no? In this case, we have William Ernst, the owner of QC Mart, a chain of convenience stores in Bettendorf, Iowa. Ernst decided a fun work thing to do to promote store bonding or whatnot would be to make his employees participate in a contest in which they'd predict who would next be fired. Whee! He even gave prizes to those who "won." Alas, the fun and games ended when he was taken to court, and a judge determined that his game was a "deplorable" act.

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​Making lemonade of the world's lemons, Hallmark, card purveyor, bringer of joy to the people who are having birthdays, graduating, getting married, having anniversaries, or thanking each other, now makes unemployment cards, apparently. Said one Hallmark store owner, "The cards are flying off the shelves." They say things like, "Don't think of it as losing your job, think of it as time between stupid bosses," "When life gives you a lemon, go ahead and make a martini with it," and "Losing your job does not define you. What you do about it does."

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