IBO: Outlook Gets Grimmer

NEW YORK CITY-An even bleaker assessment of the economic outlook than the city and state comptrollers have already provided comes from the New York City Independent Budget Office. The IBO forecast projects New York City job losses 40% higher than state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli predicted in late November–a gap which IBO director Ronnie Lowenstein attributes partly to the passage of time.

Without knowing DiNapoli’s precise methodology, “the biggest difference is just that in the past month or so, it’s become clear that the US recession is far deeper than most macro forecasts had anticipated,” Lowenstein tells GlobeSt.com. She adds that the forecasts from DiNapoli and city comptroller William Thompson, Jr. would not have incorporated the December unemployment numbers from the US Labor Department–just released on Friday–and may not have incorporated the November numbers, which have since been revised upward.

“Locally, since these reports came out, we have gotten the news from Citigroup,” Lowenstein says. She’s referring to the financial services giant’s November announcement of 50,000 layoffs worldwide. Another factor influencing the IBO’s job-loss projection–243,000 by 2010, compared to 175,000 in DiNapoli’s forecast–is that “we have had an additional month of unemployment collection data. All of that is evidence that things are worse.”