Ed Glaeser wonders about New York City's moderate unemployment

here:

New York’s historically high unemployment rates have much to do with the city’s ability to attract less-well-educated workers. New York has strong social services, abundant public transportation and ethnic enclaves, which make the city more livable for poorer people, especially those from outside the United States. Today, only 16 percent of adult Americans are high school dropouts, while more than 21 percent of New Yorkers lack high school diplomas.

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Yet despite the city’s many less-well-educated workers, and even though this recession was supposed to decimate Wall Street, New York has, so far, gotten through it with relatively little unemployment. As of January, the city’s unemployment rate was 6.9 percent while the national rate was 7.6 percent. The epicenters of the current recession are California and Michigan, where the state unemployment rates are already in double digits. Nine California metropolitan areas have unemployment rates above 12 percent.