Tagged: jobs

New York's senators say they have three new pieces of legislation that will reduce unemployment among recent veterans.

At a joint press conference Monday outside Syracuse University's Institute for Veterans and Military Families, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) unveiled the three bills, which Gillibrand says have bipartisan support.

Unemployment among veterans who served after September 11, 2001 is more than 12 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Cuomo administration is promoting a new program aimed at reducing unemployment among teens and young adults in low-income parts of the state.

The Labor Department's New York Youth Works program was first announced in February. Officials were in Syracuse late last week to highlight the benefits of the program.

The education and healthcare sectors - or "eds and meds" - provide potential for upstate New York's economy - as long as the region can translate research activity into job creation.

That was the message from William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Dudley was in Syracuse Thursday for a series of speeches. He also sat down with the Innovation Trail.

"The educational establishment is world-class," Dudley said. "And the amount of innovation that those institutions are driving is substantial. But not much of that innovation actually leads to jobs in the region."

The recession brought widespread unemployment across the U.S., but it also prompted a spike in the number of freelance or independent workers.

More than 30 percent of the nation's workers now work on their own, and the research firm IDC projects the number of nontraditional office workers — telecommuters, freelancers and contractors — will reach 1.3 billion worldwide by 2015.

Typically, freelancers get to choose when and where they work. Many opt to set up shop in "co-working" arrangements, where they can rent a cubicle and other office resources by the day or the month.

It was once a relatively simple process to sign up with a co-working site.

Ken Simonson is on a road trip to lobby for an increase in government investment in infrastructure projects.

Tuesday morning he stood in front of equipment at Milton Caterpillar in Syracuse and said “It’s great to see all this magnificent construction equipment, but it would be even better to see it in action.”

Simonson is the chief economists for the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), a trade group. He highlighted Syracuse as one of four metro areas that have struggled more than most to regain jobs in constructions.

This is the first in a series of reports by the Innovation Trail taking a closer look at New York State's industrial development agencies, or IDAs. 

Ask just about any politician these days, and he'll likely tell you that a big part of his job is to create jobs.

So how does the government attempt to do that?

Here in New York, industrial development agencies (IDAs) are one of main job creation mechanisms for local communities.

In 2009, IDAs gave away close to half a billion dollars in tax breaks to companies in the name of economic development.

IDAs are known as "public benefit corporations" - they're supposed to help their local communities, and create jobs.

But in their four decades of existence, they've been accused of everything from failing to comply with state laws, to simply being inefficient.