When the BLS reports the May job number in one week's time, it will mark a historic threshold: this will be the report when the total number of jobs lost during the financial crisis at the national level is finally recovered, and the US has the same number of people employed as it did during the last peak in January 2008 (even if the number of Americans not in the labor force has increase by 13.5 million since then). However, as is always the case in a as diverse as the US, what happens as the national level is very distinct from regional developments.
In this case we bring our readers' attention to a chart from a recent NY Fed presentation [5] showing the "recovery" in the employment both at the national level where as noted the thick red line is about to cross the X axis, as well as three distinct MSA: 1) New York City, 2) Upstate New York so very different from Manhattan, and 3) Northern New Jersey.
Which brings us to today's rhetorical pop quiz: spot the odd labor market out, one dominated by the financial industry, also known as the place which has benefited by far the most from QE, which may have failed most of America, but certainly has unfailed America's financial industry, where things have never been better.
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Source: NY Fed [5], h/t @RudyHavenstein [7] [7]