Builders broke ground on more new homes in May, but most of the gains were in the volatile apartment sector.
The Commerce Department says new-home construction rose 3.5 percent from April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 560,000 units per year.
Economists say the pace of construction is far below the 1.2 million new homes per year that must be built to sustain a healthy housing market. Many credit-strapped builders are struggling to compete with comparatively cheap foreclosures saving account pay day loan.
Housing permits, a gauge of future construction, rose 8.7 percent last month, to the highest level since December.
Fewer new homes mean fewer jobs. Each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in taxes, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
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Australia’s economy probably shrank last quarter for the first time since 2008 as floods inundated coal mines and farmland, a contraction the central bank sees as temporary before growth rebounds in the second half of the year.
First-quarter gross domestic product fell 0.3 percent from the October-December period, when it rose 0.7 percent, according to the median of 25 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The Bureau of Statistics releases the report at 11:30 a.m. in Sydney tomorrow, six days before the Reserve Bank of Australia decides on interest rates.
RBA Governor Glenn Stevens has pledged to look past data distorted by natural disasters and said interest rates will rise “at some point” to contain inflation. The local currency has risen 26 percent in the past 12 months as companies including BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) increase hiring to meet Chinese and Indian demand for iron ore and coal, pushing unemployment below 5 percent.
“The outlook for the economy should remain supportive of a near-term increase in interest rates,” said Joshua Williamson, a senior economist in Sydney at Citigroup Inc., who forecast a 0.3 percent GDP decline and a rate increase in August. “The exceptional strength of planned investment in mining illustrates the significant challenges the RBA faces in trying to ensure that the boom can be accommodated without leading to a significant overshooting of its inflation target.”
Compared with a year earlier, Australia’s economy probably expanded 1.8 percent in the first quarter, after gaining 2.7 percent from a year earlier in the previous period, the survey of economists showed.
Mining Spree
Driving growth is mining investment the government estimates will be A$76 billion ($81 billion) next fiscal year. BHP Billiton, the world’s biggest mining company, is expanding its iron ore operations in Western Australia state’s Pilbara region. Energy companies are also considering new developments.
ConocoPhillips (COP) and Origin Energy Ltd. (ORG) say they plan to approve a liquefied natural gas venture in the middle of this year and begin exports in 2015. The proposal, in Queensland state, follows Santos Ltd. (STO) and BG Group Plc developments and may cost more than A$20 billion, according to Citigroup.
“Some areas of the economy are expected to be very strong, while conditions will be quite difficult in others due to the appreciation of the exchange rate and subdued consumer spending,” the central bank said in a quarterly review in Sydney on May 6.
Weaker Spending
Household spending accounts for 54 percent of Australia’s economy, and a government report this month showed retail sales unexpectedly fell 0.5 percent in March, the first decline in five months. Sales adjusted to remove inflation stagnated in the three months through March from the previous quarter.
The local dollar surpassed $1.10 on May 2, the highest level since it was freely floated in 1983. The currency’s strength is hurting exporters including Henderson, Western Australia-based shipbuilder cash advance loan no fax.bloomberg.com/austal-ltd/” href=”http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=ASB:AU” density=”sparse” title=”Get Quote” ticker=”ASB:AU” class=”web_ticker”>Austal Ltd. (ASB)
The RBA’s benchmark interest rate of 4.75 percent is the developed world’s highest, raising debt payments for homeowners. Myer Holdings Ltd. (MYR) and David Jones Ltd. (DJS), Australia’s biggest department store chains, reported declines in quarterly sales on May 11.
In a quarterly outlook released May 6, the RBA forecast growth will be 4.25 percent this year, unchanged from its February estimate. Consumer prices will rise 3.25 percent over the period, from a previous prediction of 3 percent, and core inflation will quicken to 3 percent from 2.75 percent, it said.
Export Income
“Australia’s terms of trade are likely to rise further in the June quarter, to be above the level assumed a few months ago — and at their highest level in at least 140 years — boosted in particular by high prices for iron ore and coal,” the RBA said, referring to a measure of income earned from exports.
Disrupting trade were floods in Queensland state in January that Prime Minister Julia Gillard called the nation’s most expensive natural disaster. Queensland produces 80 percent of steel-making coal exports from Australia, the world’s biggest supplier, and grows more than 30 percent of the country’s fruit and vegetables.
An area the size of Egypt was declared a disaster zone, including parts of the state capital, Brisbane, and helped push Australia’s trade balance into deficit in February for the first time in almost a year.
Slower Job Growth
Expanding resource projects helped Australia post record employment growth last year before hiring cooled in the first four months of the year. Employers shed 22,100 jobs in April, bringing to 26,300 the number of net new positions created in the first four months of the year, the weakest start to a year since 1999.
Still, the number of unemployed Australians in April fell to the lowest level since January 2009.
The April jobs report showed employment rose 22,900 in Queensland and Western Australia, states that are the biggest participants in what the government calls the largest mining- investment boom in the country’s history. The number of jobs in New South Wales and Victoria, home to Australia’s two most populous cities, dropped by 56,200.
“Most leading indicators point to further growth in employment over the months ahead, although at a slower pace than in 2010,” the Reserve Bank said May 6. It also predicted the jobless rate would fall to 4.25 percent by December 2013.
The Australian dollar’s strength is driving consumers to purchase cheaper goods over the Internet, hurting domestic retailers, Patrick Elliott, chairman of JB Hi-Fi Ltd. said April 3. The advance in the household savings rate, which reached 9.7 percent at the end of last year from 1.5 percent three years earlier, is further crimping profits.
Further weighing on consumers, the government said this month it will end 23 years of spending growth to help ease inflation pressure and support the return to a budget surplus. Gillard’s administration is trying to ease the need for higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.
The Greek government endorsed an accelerated asset-sale plan and 6 billion euros ($8.4 billion) of budget cuts to win extra aid and stem a market slide that threatens to swamp debt-laden euro-area nations.
Belgium had the outlook on its AA+ investment-grade credit rating lowered to negative by Fitch Ratings yesterday as the cost to insure Greek debt against default rose to a record and the yield on its 10-year bonds increased to a euro-era high.
Europe’s debt crisis has deepened as euro political leaders clashed with central bankers after floating the prospect of extending maturities on Greek bonds. That “soft” restructuring may also be accompanied by more loans to Greece, which received a 110 billion-euro bailout last year, now that the government has delivered the additional budget cuts and pledged to speed asset sales.
“There may be slipping, sliding into some sort of re- profiling of Greek debt,” Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told Bloomberg Television’s In the Loop yesterday. “They may be about to face their own special European Lehman moment.”
To avert that possibility, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s Cabinet agreed yesterday to sell stakes in Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA (HTO) by the end of next month, as well as Public Power Corp SA (PPC), Hellenic Postbank SA, and the country’s ports.
Stakes’ Value
The state’s stakes in those three companies currently have a market value of 2.1 billion euros. The government also said it would create a fund comprising assets to accelerate the sales, intended to raise 50 billion euros by 2015. The bulk of that will come from selling 35 billion euros of real estate.
Greek 10-year yields were little changed at a record 17 percent, while yields on two-year notes slipped 18 basis points to 26.07 percent. Contracts on Greek default insurance jumped 27 basis points to a record 1,400.
The government plans to complete the sale of Postbank by the end of the year, and to sell 75 percent stakes in Piraeus Port Authority and Thessaloniki Port Authority SA. It also intends to extend the concession for Athens International Airport this year.
Greece owns 20 percent of Hellenic Telecommunications, or OTE, which has a market value of 3.2 billion euros. It has the right to sell a 10 percent stake to Deutsche Telekom AG, which already holds 30 percent. The government is seeking financial advisers to exercise the put option, and for the sale of a further 6 percent of the company, the finance ministry said.
Budget Cuts
The Cabinet also announced the additional budget cuts worth about 2.8 percent of gross domestic product needed to reach a 7.5 percent deficit target for 2011 even as its economy contracts for a third year, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said.
“With an economy still in recession, it’s very difficult to keep piling on larger amounts of fiscal tightening,” said David Mackie, London-based chief European economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. on a conference call yesterday. “I think instead we are moving to an environment where asset sales are going to be used as the key means of signaling Greece’s commitment here.”
Greece has a “refinancing hole” of 30 billion euros for both 2012 and 2013 each, according to economist Nouriel Roubini. The nation could restructure by issuing debt with lower interest payments and extend maturities as it’s unlikely the nation will “regain market access for the next five to 10 years,” he said in an interview last week.
Deficit Forecasts
The European Commission on May 13 said that the deficit would be 9.5 percent of GDP this year, more than three times the EU limit, without the additional budget cuts approved yesterday. Debt, already the euro area’s biggest relative to economic output, may reach 158 percent of GDP this year and peak at 166 percent next year.
Investment-grade Belgium also took a hit as Fitch followed Standard & Poor’s in saying that political deadlock complicates efforts to cut the euro area’s third-highest debt load.
Fitch may cut Belgium’s grade, the second-highest rating, should the country fail to adhere to its deficit targets, according to a statement. Belgium needs to reduce its shortfall to less than 3 percent of GDP next year and balance its books by 2015, as agreed with the European Commission.
A caretaker administration has ruled Belgium since elections last June as tensions in the linguistically divided nation led to the longest postwar political stalemate in Western Europe. A strengthening economic recovery has helped shrink the deficit to an estimated 3.6 percent of GDP this year from 5.9 percent in 2009, though reducing the debt will require political resolve, Fitch said.
MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. narrowed its first-quarter loss to $4.5 million, or 2 cents a share, compared with a loss of $9.6 million, or 4 cents a share, in the corresponding period of 2010. Quarterly sales for the O’Fallon, Mo.-based maker of silicon wafers for solar modules and semiconductors rose to $735.9 million from $437.7 million last year.
Pfizer Inc. says its first-quarter profit rose 10 percent, due to lower costs for production and research and a smaller tax bill.
The world’s biggest drugmaker by revenue says its net income was $2.22 billion, or 28 cents per share. That’s up from $2.03 billion, or 25 cents per share, in 2010’s first quarter.
Excluding one-time items, income would have been $4.81 billion, or 60 cents a share, down just over 1 percent from a year ago.
The maker of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor and impotence pill Viagra says revenue was $16 installment payday loans.5 billion, down a half-percent from $16.58 billion a year ago.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected earnings per share of 58 cents and revenue of $16.59 billion. Typically, they exclude one-time items.
(This version CORRECTS the revenue forecast in the last paragraph to $16.59 billion.)
Rising oil prices and anticipation that China might tighten monetary policy yet again to combat inflation kept Asian stock markets in check on Monday.
Oil prices rose to near $113 a barrel after Libyan rebels in control of key oil producing areas in the OPEC nation said they won’t produce crude for at least a month as they repair fields damaged in fighting.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was slightly lower at 9,689.96, vacillating between positive and negative territory. Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s No. 1 auto producer, was down 0.5 percent after the company announced its car production in Japan plummeted nearly 63 percent in March.
Japan’s powerhouse auto industry has struggled to regain its footing since an earthquake on March 11. The quake spawned a huge tsunami that crashed into the country’s northeastern coast, home to a vast network of auto parts suppliers. Those smaller companies were wiped out, leaving Toyota and many other Japanese industry behemoths scrambling for alternatives.
Japan has now begun to turn its attention to reconstruction, with the government proposing last week a special $50 billion budget to help finance reconstruction efforts and plans to build 100,000 temporary homes for survivors.
That helped lift shares of companies expected to play a major role in the rebuilding effort. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. rose 1.3 percent, and Nishimatsu Construction Co. Inc. was up 0.8 percent. Komatsu Ltd., one of the world’s leading equipment makers, was 0.3 percent higher.
Stock, bond and commodities markets were closed in the U.S. on Friday for the Easter holiday and many markets were also shut in Europe and Asia. Markets in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong remained closed Monday.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.7 percent to 2,213.28, with a Yonhap news report Monday showing the volume of cargo handled at South Korea seaports grew more than 7 percent during the first quarter of 2011, fueled by improving economic and trade conditions. Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., South Korea’s leading shipbuilder, rose 2.1 percent. Other transport shares were up, including Korean Air, by 3.7 percent.
On the downside, mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index dropped 0 same day payday loans.7 percent to 2,989.55 and the smaller Shenzhen Composite Index was down 1.1 percent to 1,261.25.
News reports on Sunday quoted China’s national planning agency as saying inflation will be about 5 percent in the second quarter. Wang Ren, an analyst at Ping’an Securities, in Shenzhen said the estimate was not out of line with expectations. Still, inflation is regarded as a chief threat to the global economic recovery, and central banks were expected to use the means at their disposal to try to tame it. That could reduce liquidity that has been supporting share prices.
“What we can see over the next three months is that equity markets are probably going to trade sideways at best, and probably on the downside,” said Tey Tze Ming, a trader at Saxo Capital Markets in Singapore. “Inflation is going to play a very big role.” Central banks in emerging markets “will be forced to increase borrowing costs.”
China’s central bank has raised the reserve requirement ratio for commercial banks four times and benchmark interest rates twice since the beginning of this year to mop up excess liquidity.
Some investors stayed on the sidelines in anticipation of several key events later this week, including earnings reports of some major Japanese companies and the Federal Reserve meeting on April 26-27.
Benchmark crude for June delivery was up 32 cents at $112.61 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil markets were closed Friday for the Easter holiday. The June contract last settled up 84 cents at $112.29 on Thursday.
OPEC-member Libya sits atop Africa’s largest proven oil reserves. But Libyan exports have largely disappeared from the international market since an uprising to oust Moammar Gadhafi began, helping drive oil prices to their highest levels in more than two years.
The dollar strengthened to 82.11 yen from 81.90 yen late Friday in New York. The euro rose to $1.4572 from $1.4550. It had risen to a 16-month high of $1.4648 during Thursday’s trading.
With tears welling in her eyes, the 16-year-old recounted how both her brothers were killed by troops fighting for strongman Laurent Gbagbo. Then rage contorted her face as she ranted against the arrested former president: “They must kill him. He’s a savage.”
Gbagbo was finally arrested and forced from power on April 11, more than four months after he lost elections. Calls for reconciliation and healing have come from all sides since then.
“We beg forgiveness for the bad things that have happened. But nothing can be gained by seeking vengeance,” said warlord Ibrahim “IB” Coulibaly, who had thrown his forces against Gbagbo. “Hatred and vengeance are our weaknesses.”
President Alassane Ouattara himself has called for reconciliation. He also has said he wants Gbagbo tried by national and international courts.
But despite calls for healing in Ivory Coast, some say they cannot forgive.
Justice Minister Jeannot Ahoussou said he is drawing up a list of ministers, generals and journalists to be charged with blood crimes, corruption and hate speech.
At an Abidjan church where Gbagbo partisans have sought refuge, people still were talking of the need for the West African nation to be run by “real Ivorians” _ a reference to Gbagbo’s divisionist tactic of questioning the nationality even of Ouattara, who was born in Ivory Coast but whose father is from neighboring Burkina Faso. Gbagbo also attempted to raise Western opposition to Ouattara by harping on his Muslim religion and suggesting he would turn Ivory Coast into a refuge for Islamist radicals.
Gbagbo, who came to power in 2000 promising to unite the country, had resorted to inciting old tribal and religious rivalries to create dissension and prolong his stay in power.
Coulibaly, whose “Invisible Commando” began the fight in the commercial city of Abidjan to wrest power from Gbagbo troops who fired mortars and rockets at civilians, said Ivory Coast needs reconciliation and pointed to South Africa as an example. But Coulibaly himself has been a divisive force among those fighting for Ouattara, raising fears that old rivalries put aside while different armed groups joined forces to topple Gbagbo could now re-emerge.
Coulibaly has denied there was infighting between his fighters and other pro-Ouattara forces. But witnesses said there was, costing lives and delaying Gbagbo’s capture for 10 days. The witnesses said Coulibaly wanted to announce on TV that he was heading a new transitional military government. Coulibaly denies it.
Another possible obstacle is Gbagbo’s rabble-rousing youth minister Charles Ble Goude, who is in hiding. He is wanted by the Ivory Coast government for crimes including inciting his Young Patriot thugs to attack foreigners and people from tribes loyal to Ouattara. He also allegedly used them as a human shield around the presidential residence where Gbagbo had sheltered in a fortified underground bunker.
Before Gbagbo was finally ousted, there were barbarities on both sides.
Gbagbo fighters slaughtered at least four Muslim imams during the fighting in Abidjan and set ablaze at least 10 mosques.
Pro-Ouattara fighters attacked the Catholic cathedral in the southwestern cocoa port of San Pedro, firing into 5,000 residents from tribes opposed to Gbagbo who had sought refuge there. One man was killed and many wounded.
On Saturday, Gbagbo party leader Pascal Affi N’Guessan urged die-hard militants to lay down their arms and called for national reconciliation. “The war has ended,” he said, urging Ivorians to “give a chance to the restoration of peace” and halt the “revenge killings, the looting.”
He expressed the party’s sympathies to the families of all those who died.
But that is not enough for Fatoumata Zhama Diaby, the 16-year-old. She was at a weekend march, dancing and singing along with other women and shouting their support for Ouattara. After she lashed out at Gbagbo, a reporter asked if she heard Ouattara’s call for reconciliation.
“They killed both of my brothers. We are six left now, only girls. My brothers were very dear to me,” she said, putting a hand over her heart.
She said Fohmad Diaby, 24, and Comaba Blo Diaby, 17, died the day of the election, Nov. 28, when soldiers attacked people protesting Gbagbo’s refusal to step down. The elder brother was hit by a grenade she said, showing shrapnel wounds on her arms from the same blast. The younger brother was disabled and could not run with others. He was shot.
“I can never, never forgive them,” Diaby said. “Gbagbo is inhuman. If I saw him today, I wouldn’t just kill him, I would cut him into pieces.”
The euro fell the most since November against the yen and dropped from a 15-month high versus the dollar on concern a bailout for Greece may fail to prevent the first default by a country in the 17-nation currency region.
New Zealand’s dollar surged this week to a three-year high versus the greenback on speculation accelerating inflation won’t hamper the economy. The U.S. currency touched the lowest level this month versus the yen on bets the Federal Reserve will reaffirm after its April 26-27 meeting its plan to keep borrowing costs low to support the economic growth.
“The risk premium in the periphery has re-emerged,” said Mark McCormick, a currency strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. “People are becoming concerned with the probability of countries like Greece and Ireland having to potentially restructure their debt.”
The euro fell 2.3 percent to 119.96 yen yesterday, from 122.76 on April 8, in the biggest weekly decrease since a 2.5 percent drop in the five days ended Nov. 26. The euro depreciated 0.4 percent to $1.4430, from $1.4483, after rising above $1.45 for the first time since January 2010.
The dollar dropped 1.9 percent to 83.13 yen, from 84.76, after touching 82.96 this week, the lowest level since March 31.
Sweden’s krona advanced to a two-week high against the euro on speculation the Riksbank will increase its target lending rate by a quarter-percentage point to 1.75 percent on April 20. The krona appreciated 0.7 percent to 8.9243 versus the euro after touching 8.9241 yesterday, the strongest since April 1. The currency gained 0.3 percent to 6.1848 versus the dollar.
Canadian Dollar
The Canadian dollar slid from a three-year high versus the greenback, dropping for the first time since the week ended March 18. The Bank of Canada held its target lending rate at 1 percent at its meeting April 12 and said currency appreciation “could create even greater headwinds” for the economy.
The loonie slid 0.4 percent to 95.92 cents versus the greenback after touching 95.27 on April 8, the strongest level since November 2007.
The New Zealand dollar rallied as Finance Minister Bill English said yesterday in a Bloomberg Television interview that the nation’s accelerating inflation won’t hamper the economy. Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard said this week the economy will get a boost from higher farm export prices, which will underpin the nation’s currency and may stir inflation.
The kiwi appreciated 2.1 percent to 79.95 cents after touching 79.97 yesterday, the highest level since April 2008. The New Zealand dollar was little changed at 66.46 yen.
Greece’s Yield Spread
The extra yield investors demand to hold Greek 10-year debt instead of equivalent German securities widened to 10 percentage points, the most since before the euro’s debut in 1999. Greece’s 10-year yield climbed to a record high of 13.84 percent.
Germany’s Zeit newspaper reported April 14 that a restructuring of Greek sovereign debt may involve imposing losses of 50 to 70 percent on investors. Ireland’s credit rating was cut two levels by Moody’s Investors Service to the lowest investment grade as the government struggles to lower the budget deficit and restore economic growth.
“Increased worries about defaults in the periphery are weighing yet again on the euro,” said David Mann, New York- based head of research in the Americas at Standard Chartered.
Finland’s anti-euro bloc is set to win record support at tomorrow’s election, forcing the country’s biggest parties to take a tougher stance on bailouts as they try to woo voters tired of rescuing fiscal failures.
True Finns
Support for political groups opposed to euro-area rescues was 47.3 percent in the latest poll by Helsingin Sanomat, published April 12. The True Finns, whose leader Timo Soini said taxpayers in the Nordic country shouldn’t have helped bail out Greece or Ireland, has seen its support soar to 16.9 percent from 6.9 percent a year ago.
The Dollar Index, which IntercontinentalExchange Inc. uses to track the greenback versus the currencies of six major U.S. trading partners, fell 0.3 percent to 74.820 after touching 74.617, the lowest level since December 2007.
Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said this week in New York that an increase in food and fuel costs will have only a temporary impact on inflation and consumer spending and warrants no reversal of record monetary stimulus.
The Fed will hold the target lending rate at zero to 0.25 percent at its meeting ending April 27, according to all of the economists in a Bloomberg News survey.
The yen rallied 2.3 percent to 86.67 versus the Canadian dollar on reduced demand for assets related to economic growth as China said inflation reached the fastest pace in more than two years, reviving speculation the world’s second-largest economy will cool growth.
“Chinese inflation backs expectations the People’s Bank of China is likely to tighten policy in the months ahead so that could mean slower global growth, which tends to unsettle investor appetite for risk and inspire demand for safety and the yen,” said Joe Manimbo, a market analyst in Washington at Travelex Global Business Payments, a currency-exchange network.
Want to go where the jobs are? Check out New York’s tech industry. The city’s second annual NYC Startup Job Fair, held Friday, drew a packed-to-capacity crowd of both job seekers and those looking to hire them.
It was so jammed that the organizers turned away 80 startups looking to attend and recruit.
"This is the only industry that has a booming number of jobs — and they cannot fill those jobs fast enough," said Drew Nichols, development manager at career website TheLadders.com.
With 400 employees, his company is looking to expand across all fronts. Nichols is especially eager to hire more software developers.
"The market in New York is very tight," he said.
SecondMarket business strategy analyst Alex Horn started the event last year to help grow the New York tech ecosystem. "There wasn’t really an opportunity for students looking for jobs in the startup space," he said.
And as venture capitalists pour money into startups and valuations soar, the hunt for employees has taken off.
Karsten Vagner, recruitment manager at ZocDoc, a medical appointment scheduling startup, said they are "aggressively hiring."
How aggressive? Think costumes, beer pong, and $100 cash on the spot.
The ZocDoc crew dressed as doctors and nurses, enticed attendees with games of beer pong (ok, the cups were filled with water), and handed out a "resume" on the company — while collecting nearly 300 resumes from job seekers.
They also created a quiz for potential engineers, dishing out $100 cash and an interview invitation to those who passed along.
"Next week, I expect us to make a dozen hires," Vagner said.
But it’s not just engineering positions that are opening up.
"We’re hiring in everything," said Nikki Laffel, who runs production at Quirky, a consumer products company. "We’re scheduled to double in size this year."
Held at AOL’s (AOL) headquarters and co-hosted by the Columbia Venture Community and NYC Ventures, two university-based networking groups, the startup fair drew a steady stream of college students hoping to work at entrepreneurial companies.
Anku Oberoi, a New Jersey Institute of Technology student who will graduate this year, came with a stack of resumes payday advance.
"New York is like the finance capital of the world. I think it’s time for another industry to take over," he said. "Tech seems to be that next industry."
New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn cast the startup boom as a sign of a recovering economy. "These start-ups are evidence that Silicon Alley is alive and well in our city, and that there is so much creativity and economic activity happening right now," she said.
While there’s talk of a recovering economy, there’s also chatter — and concern — about an increasingly bubbly tech outlook. After all, this is how the hiring scene felt at the height of the dot-com mania, with startups devouring every skilled employee they could find. Then the bubble burst and the pink-slip parties started.
But such dark thoughts had no place at Friday’s packed gathering. Samantha Smith, a student at NYU, sees this as a prime time for entrepreneurship.
"It’s never been easier to start something," she said.
And for graduating students eyeing the job market, working in a creative environment where blue jeans and hoodies are the standard office attire doesn’t sound like a bad gig.
"The culture of a startup is so much fun," Smith said. "It’s more open."
The Unfair Fair
So what about the 80 startups that got turned away?
An e-mail that went out to the rejects accidentally cc’d all of them. So they banded together, creating their own mailing list and hatching plans for their own recruiting event: The New York City Unfair Job Fair. (They later renamed it to the Silicon Alley Job Fair.)
"It took on a life of its own," said Dan Goikhman, co-founder of Mojiva, one of those turned away. "This will culminate in an event produced by startups, for startups and those looking to work with them."
The organizers hope to hold their event within the next month or two. They’re in talks with venues such as Terminal 5, one of New York’s popular music spots.
The goal, Goikhman said, is to "be fun, somewhat different, and hopefully not your average job fair."
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