In his Labor Day speech, President Obama addressed the recession the country is experiencing at the moment. According to the Employment Situation Summary of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of non farm payroll employment in the US did not change in August. The unemployment rate is currently 9.1 percent.

While the Republican National Committee now refers to Obama as “President Zero”, there are different approaches to what these numbers mean for New York City.

As the New York Times reports, the unemployment rate in the Bronx amounts to 12 percent, which is the highest rate in the state. A reason for even greater concerns seems to be the unemployment rate among African-American men living in the Bronx: According to the Times, the rate amounts to nearly 20 percent, which is rather alarming.

In contrast, journalist Greg David argued in late August that the jobless rate alone is not representative for understanding the economic situation of New York City. He named migration as one variable that can influence the jobless rate. Moreover, he stated that the city has been able to stay in a relatively stable economic condition due to tourism and technology enterprises among others: “Google employs more than 2,000 people in the city, and is constrained only by its inability to find the people it needs.”

Adam Davidson from the NPR’s Planet Money Podcast team has discussed a quite unusual approach to the creation of job opportunities. He spoke about the micro effects a storm like Irene can have on the economy if a large number of construction workers is hired due to destructions. According to Obama’s speech, in the US there are “more than one million unemployed construction workers ready to get dirty right now”.