New York state employers signaled their intention to lay off nearly 15,700 hotel and hospitality workers in March and April because of the coronavirus fallout, a staggering increase from last year’s total.
The number compares to 2019, when the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel in Midtown, and a hospitality services firm said they would lay off a combined 656 workers. Those layoffs were announced in January and February 2019, respectively.
The overall impact of coronavirus has cut across industries. State employers have so far signaled their intent to lay off more than 86,000 workers, a vast majority of those in March and April, because of Covid-19.
The total Covid-19 related filings represent a nearly 883 percent increase from all of the employees companies said they would let go from January through April 16 last year, according to a TRD analysis of layoff notices filed in the state, comparing Jan. 1 through April 16, in 2019 and 2020.
Employers are required to file such Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notices with states in certain cases of mass layoffs or plant closings.
While there were just 101 total notices filed in the state from Jan. 1 to April 16, 2019, there were 1,012 such notices filed during the same period this year. That’s a nearly 902 percent increase in individual filings alone.
WARN Notices in New York State from 2019 to April 16, 2020
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SOURCE: Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification
In March, the state’s unemployment rate rose to 4.5 percent from 3.7 percent the month before, the largest monthly increase the state had seen since at least 1976, according to the state Department of Labor. And New York state saw an 0.5 percent drop in private sector jobs in March, the largest monthly decline in more than a decade.
Write to Mary Diduch at md@therealdeal.com