During the first three months of 1997, the City gained nearly 20,000 jobs, after adjusting for seasonal fluctuations. But the unemployment rate also continued to rise, averaging 9.5 percent in the first three months of 1997, up from 8.7 percent and 9.0 percent in the third and fourth quarters of 1996. The City's seasonally adjusted March unemployment rate of 9.7 percent is 4.5 percentage points higher than the national rate, the highest gap in recorded history. The Workforce in the City is Increasingly Better Educated. Between 1980 and 1990, the share of the City's labor force ages 25 and over without a high school diploma fell from 40 percent to 32 percent, and the college-graduate share rose from 17 percent to 23 percent.
Education Helps Get a Job.
Those with a college education were almost twice as likely to have a job as high school dropouts. In 1990, almost 85 percent of college grads had a job, but only 44.6 percent of dropouts. Unemployment for dropouts was 8.7 percent, two and a half times the 3.4 percent for college grads. Nonparticipants are Less Educated. Thirty percent of the employed finished college, more than three times the 9.2 percent of nonparticipant college grads.