The relationship between unemployment and crime rates in New York City

Unemployment and Crime Rates

Safety and income opportunity are two of the most important factors that affect the overall status of one country, city or state. As for safety, the crime rate will be the determinant while the employment or unemployment rate will be the determinant for income opportunities. But beyond this, unemployment rate and crime rate also provide a strong impact to each other.

This paper is aimed at analyzing the effects of New York City's unemployment and crime rate. Specifically, this paper is intended for:

Highlight the recent statistics related to crime and unemployment rate of New York City

Study the impact of crime rate to the unemployment rate of the city and vice versa

It is hypothesized that as the unemployment rate increases, the crime rate of New York City also increases.

Relationship of Crime and Unemployment Rate

In a recent study conducted analyzing the relationship of unemployment rate to the top safest cities in the United and compared to the relationship of unemployment rate to the top most dangerous cities in the U.S. Seeing table below:

10 Safest Cities

Rank

City

2005 Unemployment Rate

San Jose, CA

El Paso, TX

Honolulu, HI

New York, NY

Austin, TX

San Diego, CA

Louisville, KY

San Antonio, TX

Fort Worth, TX

Jacksonville, FL

10 Most Dangerous Cities

Rank

City

2005 Unemployment Rate

Detroit, MI

Baltimore, MD

Washington, DC

Memphis, TN

Dallas, TX

Philadelphia, PA

Columbus, OH

Nashville, TN

Houston, TX

Charlotte, NC

Source: Morgan Quitno Press and Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It can be easily reflected that the unemployment rate in the safer cites are much lower than the unemployment rate in the dangerous cities. These dangerous cities are classified as those with higher instances of crime and other violent activities.

Analysis

With high unemployment rate, it would mean that a lot of people are stressed. They will be stressed to find for possible means to earn a living that will help provide foods in the table and pay for the basic needs of the family. If there will be no employment opportunities, then a unemployed person will resort to using other means such as robbery or stealing, hold-ups and the likes. More so, some unemployed people will be too stressed to think logically and will instead resort to some vices such as alcohol drinking or even drugs. This in turn help are additional factors to the increase of other deviant activities like rape, violence and more.

With the data presented above, it is of no doubt that unemployment rate and crime rate have an impact to each other. If one declines, the other too will eventually decline. The ultimate impact of which can be seen to the status of the city itself. Hence, by looking close at the data stating the since 2000, there is a decline in crime rate in New York City, it would mean there have been more employment and/r income opportunity in the area, thus making the city a comfortable place to live in.

Reference List

Bureau of Labor Statistics. http://www.bls.gov/lau/lacilg05.htm

Durose, Matthew and Langan, Patrick. 21 October 2004. "The Remarkable Drop in Crime in New York City." Bureau of Justice Statistics. U.S. Department of Justice.

Morgan Quitno Press. "12th Annual America's Safest and Most Dangerous Cities. www.morganquitno.com

The New York Beacon. 22 December 2004. "New York City crime rate hits historic low." Smith Haj Group.

Gould, Eric, Weinberg, Bruce, Mustard, David. 2002. "Crime Rates and Local Labor Market opportunities in the U.S.: 1979-1997. The Review of Economics and Statistics. 84(1): 45-61