City’s Unemployment Rate Reaches 10 Percent

New York City’s unemployment rate climbed to 10 percent in June, equaling the highest level it reached during the recession, even as employers continued hiring at a healthy pace, the State Labor Department reported on Thursday.

Though city officials make almost daily pronouncements about how impressively the city’s economy has rebounded from the long recession, the unemployment rate has returned to the peak it held for six months, from fall 2009 until February 2010. The last time it was higher was 19 years ago, when it was 10.1 percent, said James P. Brown, principal economist for the department.

The June rate was up from 9.7 percent in May, and it translated to more than 397,000 unemployed city residents, according to state data. That total was within 2,000 of the highest number of jobless city residents at any time in 37 years of record keeping, the numbers showed.

The unemployment rate worsened again despite a gain of 11,500 jobs last month, Mr. Brown said. That increase was modest compared with the strong gains of recent months but was about average for the last 10 Junes, he said.

The disparity between the jobs tally and the rising unemployment rate continues to confound economists. Typically, when the survey of employers shows steady hiring for several months, as it has this year, the unemployment rate declines. But the unemployment rate, which is derived from a survey of households, indicates that the job gains are not doing much to improve the lot of city residents.

“It is disconcerting to observe this trend month after month,” said Barbara Byrne Denham, an economist with Eastern Consolidated, a real estate services firm in Manhattan. Ms. Denham said it was “perplexing” that one survey showed 1,700 fewer city residents had jobs last month than in September 2009 while the payroll survey showed that 190,000 jobs were created during that span.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg emphasized the rosier of the two assessments of the city’s job market, saying in a statement that it was “good news for the many job seekers who are voting with their feet and coming here to look for work.” He added that, “As fast as New York City is creating jobs, people are entering the labor market even faster, which indicates optimism and confidence in the long-term future of New York City.”

Labor union officials have said the bigger problem is that most of the new jobs are in industries that pay low wages, like retailing and janitorial work. They have been pushing for several months in Albany for an increase in the state’s minimum wage, which has been $7.25 an hour since 2009.

But Mr. Brown said the pattern was not so simple. While retail stores, hotels and restaurants have been steadily hiring this year, some high-paying industries have been helping to lead the recovery as well.

“Some of the biggest gains are coming out of professional service industries,” Mr. Brown said. “That’s not what one would think of as low-wage.”

Statewide, the unemployment rate also rose in June, to 8.9 percent from 8.6 percent in May. State officials attributed that increase to a surge of job-seekers re-entering the work force.