A last in a lifetime experience! (Touchstone Pictures)

But, women, we implore you: No matter how desperate you are, don't go taking every two-bit dancing/bartending job listed on Craigslist. No matter how enticing the advertisement may look,  it's always a good rule of thumb that if someone can't be bothered to Google the spelling of their favorite movie of all time, they will not be able to pay you in anything other than sweaty dollar bills stuffed into your thong.

*** Coyotee Ugly Type Brtnd No Exp Nec. (Great Tips)

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Date: 2012-11-13, 8:36AM EST
Reply to: see below

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The 21 Bar, a very popular Beach Bar located on Broadway & West 184 Street is looking to hire friendly bartenders with or without exp. to work in beach attire at Coyotee Ugly type bar.

Great tips every night

Immediate openings With or W/O Exp.

All types needed, slim, thick, light skin, dark skin Etc. This is a Real people place.

Improve your Bar-tending skills

Professional safe productive environment

One block from Trains and Buses

You must have open availability and be willing to start immediately. Please respond with your Info.

If you need any more discouragement from applying for this position, imagine the leer that might go on some guy's mug as he tells you, "This is a Real people place."

Or you could just read NYMag's review of the 21 Bar:

This tiny Washington Heights dive is known for two things: a two-for-one nightly happy hour that goes for almost every drink, and bikini-clad girls gyrating atop the bar counter to Latin slow jams and reggaeton. Considering the scenario, the joint stays (relatively) classy: no nudity, no lap dances. Pay no mind to the lack of draft beer. Ignore the Taco Bell–style adobe walls, and the choking-victim posters. Take a seat and enjoy yourself, very few strings attached.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the number for 2011 has been higher and, in fact, was up by 25,400 through July of this year before trending lower. In total, there are now 1.2 million office-sector jobs in New York City. During the recent downturn, it had fallen to 1.150 million. The record high since at least January 1990 was set in January 2001 at 1.298 million positions. For 2011, the problem areas have been information (down by 3,100), banking (down by 400) and insurance (down by 400). Believe it or not, the official numbers show that the securities industry is actually up by 900 positions this year, closing October at 168,900. That said, it remains well below the job levels recorded in late 2007/early 2008 (nearly 190,000) and back in late 2000/early 2001 (just over 200,000).

Robert Sammons, Cassidy Turley

I was particularly amused by the recent college grad who postulated that he should not have to pay back his school loans because “the banks were bailed out. Where’s my bailout?” Someone should explain to him that the banks were lent money that they paid back with interest, yielding a substantial profit to the taxpayer, notwithstanding all of the other tangential benefits of keeping the banking system afloat. He was already given his bailout by virtue of the loan itself. Not wanting to pay it back is what differentiates this student from the banks.

I certainly don’t mean to make light of the plight of the unemployed today, which is a significant problem for far too many of our citizens. While not many people take O.W.S. itself too seriously, there are, however, two important takeaways from these protests. The first is that it is likely to be an early iteration of things to come as discontent with current economic conditions and the unsustainability of our economic “promises” become all too clear. The second takeaway is derived from interpreting the timing of these demonstrations.

Things were much worse economically in the fall of 2008. Companies that were thought to be AAA credits had either failed or were on the brink. People were running around opening bank accounts at several different banks out of fear that A.T.M. machines might stop spitting cash. Why didn’t O.W.S. rise up then? The reason the demonstrators are here today is due to the unfortunate economic reality that many people believe things aren’t going to get tangibly better for a long time.

The economy appeared to be getting better many months ago but recent economic indicators have been trending downward and job creation has been well below expectations. European defaults are on the way (whether they are called defaults or not), Obamacare hasn’t kicked in yet and Dodd Frank has only started to be understood and felt by those who reside under its heavy thumb. Is it any wonder that we haven’t seen job creation gain much traction and have, in fact, observed acceleration in the number of announcements about pending layoffs in the financial sector?

The unfortunate thing, for both our economy and our commercial real estate market, is that many of our leaders today including the Fed, Congress, the president and his economic advisers have no idea what to do to make things better. The administration’s recent attempt at a third round of stimulus, a.k.a. the American Jobs Act, is another Keynesian mechanism that would have little chance of working. Moreover, it has no chance of even passing. During lunch with an Obama insider last week, it was divulged that the bill was nothing more than a campaign stunt so the president could vilify the “do-nothing” Republicans who did not pass a piece of legislation that would have saved everyone. Unfortunately, for the administration, the bill did not even make it through the Democrat-controlled Senate last week. The media really made little mention about this, likely because few actually thought it had a chance to pass.

Even John Maynard Keynes himself would not have endorsed this jobs bill. During the time Keynes developed his theories, governments balanced budgets each year. Sometimes there were deficits and sometimes there were surpluses but, cyclically, there was balance. This allowed for “savings” during surplus years and these savings could be spent during recessionary periods to stimulate demand without adding to deficits. However, we run chronic deficits. This standard operating procedure has been symptomatic of legislators on both sides of the aisle. During the eight years George W. Bush was in the white house, G.D.P. grew by 15 percent and government spending grew by a whopping 58 percent. When you borrow from yourself in good times, you can’t do it during bad times when you really need to without harmful side effects.

So now we have deficits that have grown to record levels and national debt that has ballooned from $10 trillion two and a half years ago to $14 trillion today. How this condition will be dealt with is a key question. Will we inflate our way out? Tax the rich? Tax everyone? Cut spending? Implement a value-added tax? Adopt Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan? At the end of the day the music will stop and someone will be left with no chair.

During the previous stimulus packages, businesses hired some workers for projects they knew were going to be short term. Local governments and households used savings to pay down debt and knowing that the stimulus was temporary, few people changed their long-term behavior. The government essentially wasted billions of dollars on projects that did little economic good. Impactful for commercial real estate, job creation has been too slow to impact the economy as demonstrated by the September jobs report.

In September, the unemployment rate remained at 9.1 percent even though 103,000 net new jobs were added. This included 137,000 private-sector jobs being created, which is seemingly positive, while 34,000 government jobs were eliminated. However, if we look into these numbers further, the details are telling.

One-third of the 137,000 private-sector jobs “created” were those attributed to 45,000 striking Verizon workers who returned to work and were counted as unemployed the prior month. This means that 92,000 private-sector jobs were really created. If we subtract the 34,000 government workers that were terminated, the net gain to the economy was just 58,000 jobs, far short of the 100,000 to 150,000 needed per month just to keep pace with population growth.

Long-term joblessness, for those out of work for six months or more, now makes up 44.6 percent of the total number of the unemployed. This number has been growing as our population grows and, every month job creation remains at these low levels, it creates a worse problem for the long-term unemployed, who become increasingly invisible to employers. This is perhaps the biggest source of frustration for Americans.

This growing length of time out of work tangibly increases the required growth of the economy to absorb these people and get them back to work. The average duration of unemployment grew again to 40.5 weeks, indicating that the average unemployed worker has been without a job for nine months.
Also in September, the labor force participation rate increased 0.2 percentage points, to 64.2 percent. Hourly wages increased by four cents and average weekly hours increased by 0.1 hours. These numbers by themselves are positive. Unfortunately, these improvements are coming off unexpected reductions in August and merely return these numbers to July levels.

Stresses in the jobs market are the source of much of the frustration Americans are feeling. It is also the reason why our commercial real estate recovery nationally has been well below expectations coming out of a downturn. In New York, we have been relatively lucky. Job losses have been lower than what was experience during the Savings and Loan crisis in the early 1990s and we have already gained back a significant percentage of the jobs that were lost. Unfortunately, recent announcements from financial firms mean that this trend may encounter challenging times ahead.

The government simply cannot plan the entrepreneurial innovation that leads to significant job creation but it can encourage it. The government can directly control tax and regulatory policies it imposes on businesses and Congress could act quickly to alleviate them. Unfortunately, in an election year, it is unlikely that fundamental change will be adopted. Given the magnitude of our problems, fundamental changes are indeed required. For commercial real estate, we hope that change occurs, as it would accelerate job creation and, for real estate, it’s all about jobs. Let’s hope some leadership emerges to get us there.

Robert Knakal is the chairman and founding partner of Massey Knakal Realty services and in his career has brokered the sale of more than 1,175 properties, having a market value in excess of $7.8 billion.

Slate is looking for an editorial assistant in its New York City office. The assistant's primary responsibility will be to provide administrative and editorial help to Slate's culture editors. There will also be opportunities for occasional writing.

Ideal candidates will be organized, diplomatic, and have excellent writing skills. They will also demonstrate good editorial judgment and wide cultural interests. Some editorial experience preferred. This is a 12-month contract position, without benefits.

Yikes. We know the media industry is taking a blow right now, but contractually obligating an assistant to stay in that role for a year without even offering them a basic healthcare plan? Maybe it's a big experiment on the publication's part to see if Obamacare really works for 20-somethings with liberal art degrees.

Cassidy Turley research guru Robert Sammons on private-sector job gains and the Manhattan office market:

What double-dip recession? What jobless recovery? There has been so much doom-and-gloom economic rhetoric circling the globe lately that the new jobs numbers just released by the City Comptroller’s Office appear, on the surface, to be totally contradictory. Figures for 2011 through July show that New York City has added 73,500 private sector jobs, though this number is, as always, subject to revision. And, more than likely we will see that revision as education positions were up a whopping 13,300 in the month of July alone and are sure to be adjusted lower as the year moves along.

That said, when education is taken out of the mix all together, the city still added some 6,000 private-sector jobs during the month.

And it wasn’t just July that saw a bump in the numbers, either, as the city has gained private-sector jobs each month in 2011--as few as 1,200 in May and as many as 21,800 in January. But there have been chinks appearing in the New York’s armor with both banking and securities dropping jobs for the last three months in a row. Professional services, though, has rocketed higher; and information services, after a couple of down months, has turned the corner and is now positive for the year. Even the dear, old real estate sector has added jobs in five of the last seven months.

Of course, jobs numbers are not forward looking and, if better economic news doesn’t appear on the horizon soon, the local figures are bound to weaken.

Haim Steinbach's "Untitled (breast mugs, Marilyn guitar) I-2" (1990) features an electric guitar and eight ceramic mugs. (Photo: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery)

A source just informed The Observer that Chelsea's Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is currently hiring attendants to monitor its space during its upcoming Haim Steinbach exhibition, titled "Creature."

Thank goodness.

As The Observer reported in its profile of Mr. Steinbach last month, the sculptor is going to show quite a few works in his trademark style--pieces comprised of nothing more than objects sitting freely on shelves--which means that there will be plenty of things that could be stolen or damaged.

The job listing on the New York Foundation for the Arts's website reads:

"This individual must have a neat and clean appearance, and previous work in an art setting is a plus. Time is flexible, but 4 or 8 hour shifts are being scheduled (Tuesday - Saturday, September 8 - October 22, 2011)."

It pays just $8 an hour, but it does come with some important bonuses: experience working at a contemporary art gallery and--even better--the opportunity to spend plenty of quality time with Mr. Steinbach's remarkable art.

Members of the P.E.F. will get job protection in exchange for painful but necessary concessions. Union members will receive no raises for three years (they will get 2 percent increases in the fourth and fifth years) and will have to take nine unpaid days off over the next two years. In addition, they will have to contribute more toward their health insurance, enough to save the state more than $50 million a year.

No union leader relishes these kinds of negotiations. Neither, by the way, do most politicians—after all, they live to please people, not to make them surly and resentful. But given the state’s perilous finances, there are few alternatives. The union leaders could have walked away from the table and called for demonstrations outside the state capitol. They could have launched a campaign against the governor. They could have played the class card.

Fortunately for the state, they did none of those things. The P.E.F.’s president, Kenneth Brynien, made it clear that he wanted to save the jobs of his members.  He understood that layoffs would be disastrous—the stubbornly high jobless rate does not augur well for any job-seeker in the near future. Rather than rely on bluster and threats, Mr. Brynien cut a deal that will make sure that none of his 55,000 colleagues is forced to the unemployment line. That is a laudable achievement for which his members and the taxpayers of New York should be grateful.

The deal still requires approval from the rank and file. With any luck, the P.E.F.’s members will be as reasonable as their leaders were at the bargaining table. If so, they, too, deserve credit in the ongoing project to restore the Empire State to fiscal stability.

Tough talks still await. Governor Cuomo promises to tackle yet another difficult issue: pension reform for state and city workers. The old defined-benefits model, with pensions based on salaries pumped up by extra overtime, is out of date and, frankly, grossly unfair to taxpayers and to those workers who refuse to game the system.

That fight figures to be far more difficult than this summer’s contract talks. But union leaders and Mr. Cuomo are off to a very positive start.

Indulging the Dismal Science

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that private payrolls expanded by just 57,000 jobs during June, the smallest increase since May 2010. An uptick in the unemployment rate, to 9.2 percent, was blunted as more than 400,000 Americans exited the labor force.

Important real estate market barometers, including construction employment, reported declines, as did several office-using employment sectors, including financial activities. At the national level, there are fewer jobs in financial activities than a year ago.

These latest results are consistent with a recovery that has struggled to develop momentum. As compared with the employment peak in January 2008, 8.8 million jobs were lost and 1.8 million have been recovered.

The characteristics of the newly created jobs are also an issue. In June, roughly 60 percent of net new private employment was in the leisure and hospitality sector. These relatively low-wage jobs were a drag on aggregate measures of compensation, pushing average wages lower across all private workers in June.

Should We Anticipate Less?

The jobs report coincides with a swath of just-released data relating to second-quarter rent and occupancy trends. With the exception of apartments, where the unique relationship to owner-occupied housing remains exceptionally favorable to rental fundamentals, other commercial property sectors showed signs of slower gains as compared with earlier in the year. Given the capriciousness of what drives absorption, the fundamentals reports come as no surprise.

Absent stronger labor market outcomes and a rise in business confidence, the outlook for fundamentals will remain mixed. That presents a challenge for investors, given that capital inflows and prices have diverged from the weaker cash-flow drivers of value, especially in large markets.

Particularly, as interest rates rise from their historic lows, which now comprise a central pillar of the investment and lending market’s current buoyancy, property values will come under increasing pressure absent more robust net absorption.

As for whether employment growth will accelerate, opinions vary on the magnitude and timing. To the extent that uncertainty on key policy issues—including the federal budget, taxes, financial reform and health care reform—are constraining otherwise profitable businesses from moving forward with payroll expansion, outcomes are within the scope of our influence. Other factors elude our control, raising concerns that the “normal” rate of unemployment may have risen permanently.

Some Labor Economics

While the normal rate of unemployment is an ambiguous concept, the Congressional Budget Office currently estimates that the conceptually related Non-accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment (NAIRU) has risen from 4.8 percent before the recession to 5.2 percent. In a recent brief from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, economists Justin Weidner and John Williams suggest that the new normal is even higher [1], though it may prove temporary:

… mismatches in the skills of workers and jobs, extended unemployment benefits, and very high rates of long-term joblessness, may be impeding the return to “normal” unemployment rates of around 5 percent. An examination of alternative measures of labor market conditions suggests that the “normal” unemployment rate may have risen as much as 1.7 percentage points to about 6.7 percent …

Messrs. Weidner and Williams’s reference to a deficiency in the matching process is supported by other research, which also shows that growing businesses are challenged in filling open positions. As job openings have risen, employment has failed to keep pace.

The Federal Reserve Board’s Regis Barnichon and his colleagues study the issue in a recent analysis of the Beveridge curve [2], which maps the negative relationship between the job-openings rate and the unemployment rate. While cautioning against inferences relating to the natural unemployment rate, they find that most of the current breakdown in the Beveridge relationship can be attributed to a declining vacancy yield—the ratio of hires to open positions, which is observable across industries. Changes in labor force participation and frictional unemployment, other reasons for movements in the curve, appear less relevant at this juncture.

What Next?

Wavering confidence in the private market’s capacity to deliver strong and consistent job gains—irrespective of the reasons—are feeding calls for more support from Washington. But if the policy and market uncertainty stemming from government intervention is part of the drag on business hiring, another round of short-term programs may prove counterproductive.

An editorial in this weekend’s New York Times correctly points out that it is difficult to quantify the impact of broad policy decisions that are not directly related to employment costs on business hiring. With respect to the budget talks, it goes on to state, “There is still time for the president to insist that the debt talks include a substantial program to put people to work now, while reducing the deficit over a longer period.”

In assessing the risks of such a program, we must consider that the private sector and our international creditors could interpret a major departure from fiscal discipline in a different light, undermining their confidence in us rather than bolstering it.

dsc@chandan.com

Sam Chandan, Ph.D., is president and chief economist of Chandan Economics and an adjunct professor at the Wharton School.

1. Justin Weidner and John Williams: What Is the New Normal Unemployment Rate? Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Letter, February 14, 2011, 2011-05.

2. Regis Barnichon, Michael Elsby, Bart Hobijn, and Aysegul Sahin: Which Industries Are Shifting the Beveridge Curve? Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper Series, December 2010, 2010-32.

Stephen Mayes (@stephenmmayes) of Idaho Falls, Idaho, fits into the latter category. He routinely tweets at celebrities like Lady Gaga and Kristen  Stewart, offering up his services as an assistant. In addition to running a movie blog called The Getting Spot, he purports to be a social media expert and notes on his Twitter bio: "Get to know me I am cool!" A dad of three who was laid off his job as a medical records clerk nearly two years ago, he dreams of a job that's interesting and glamorous. "It would offer a better opportunity to travel and meet other people," he told The Observer, "and maybe a better income than what I would have living in Idaho." So far, none of the celebrities has taken Mr. Mayes up on his offer.

But he is far from the only person who has tried to hit up their favorite star for a job using social media. Twitter user @alxvergara lays it out there in his own bio, explaining, "I'm not playing the hand I was dealt, I'm chasing my dreams." His strategy for chasing those dreams involves tweeting at football player and reality star Chad Ochocinco, touting his skills as a bodyguard, assistant, and Spanish translator in exchange for a mere retweet or follow.

Twitter user Lorin Dufresne (@lorinnx13) decided that she wanted to be a celebrity assistant and just started tweeting at as many country singers  as she could think of. Although her efforts have yet to yield a job offer, Ms. Dufresne remains undeterred, continuing her Twitter campaign. In April, she targeted  Chuck Wicks, asking if he'd tweet at her as a birthday gift. (He didn't.) Then she upped the ante, proposing marriage. So far, no response.

Twitter creates the illusion of closeness between celebrity and fan-if you can find out what Alyssa Milano is eating for dinner or what Neil Patrick Harris is watching on TV, then why can't you also ask them if they have any job openings on their staff? And for people who have no other knowledge about the entertainment industry or how to break into it, tweeting at a famous person seems much less risky than, say, moving to LA without any contacts.

Although Twitter has made a few fan wishes come true (most seem to involve Diddy), it tends not to work well for landing assistant jobs. For one reason, most celebrities hire their assistants through private staffing agencies, and often they request candidates who are not fans of their work in order to keep the relationship more boss/assistant and less star/fan.

Finally, while a few celebrities actually run their own social media accounts, many delegate an employee to tweet on their behalf-often, a personal assistant. And odds are good that an assistant who updates the boss' Twitter account won't actively reach out to people offering to replace him or her at work.

Lilit Marcus is the editor in chief of Crushable. 

SCHEDULER/OFFICE MANAGER: State Senate Democrat seeking a Scheduler and Office Manager. This is a critical position in the district office and is NOT a glorified executive assistant position. Responsibilities include but are not limited to the following: handling all scheduling requests, working with staff to build a strategic schedule for the Senator each week, coordinating member travel, handling Senator’s correspondence, overseeing the day-to-day functions of the district office and various other office management responsibilities. The ideal candidate would be highly organized, pro-active and must be able to multi-task. Previous scheduling experience or office management experience preferred. Salary commensurate with experience. Please email resume and cover letter to nysresumes@gmail.com.