(ANSA) - NEW YORK, DEC 14 - Unemployment in the United States has dropped to 4.2%, but in New York - long the epicenter of the pandemic - it is at 9.4%, more than double the national average.
A data that suggests how long the road to the recovery of the Big Apple is still long, where much of the recent decline in the unemployment rate is due to the exit from the labor force of thousands of people.
Covid has closed the city and kicked out tourists for months.
Now New York has returned to turn its lights back on but the scars of the pandemic are deep to heal.
The virus has engulfed the city's growth and employment engines - tourism, hospitality and retail - by burning jobs.
At present, fewer than six out of every 10 posts during the pandemic have been recovered.
Nationally, more than nine out of ten have been regained.
Before the epidemic, the tourism industry alone occupied 283,000 places in the city: by the end of 2020, a third of those places had been eliminated.
(HANDLE).