Barclays jobs a bust

From DNA Info:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg listed the Barclays Center's economic impact at the top of his administration's achievements in his State of the City speech Thursday, but most jobs at the new arena are part-time and don't come with benefits, arena officials said recently.

Bloomberg highlighted the 2,000 permanent jobs created by the new arena in his final State of the City address, which was delivered at the Barclays Center. The mayor noted that some 30 percent of Barclays Center employees are, like part owner Jay-Z once was, residents of public housing.

All told, 75 percent of the arena's employees are Brooklynites, Bloomberg said.

But of the 2,000 positions, only 100 are full-time jobs. The rest are part-time positions that don't offer health insurance, said Forest City Ratner Companies spokeswoman Ashley Cotton at a recent public meeting about the arena's impact on the surrounding area.

Gib Veconi of the neighborhood advocacy group Brooklyn Speaks said that while the jobs are a welcome change for unemployed Brooklynites, the number and quality of jobs at the Barclays Center don't measure up to what was originally promised, and pale in comparison to the amount of public subsidies the arena received.

The city's Independent Budget Office has calculated that the arena received about $750 million in direct and indirect taxpayer-funded subsidies, Veconi said.

"If you divide that by 2,000 jobs, that's $375,000 a job," Veconi said. "When you look at it in that light, does that seem like it measures up to what the public put into the project? No. You would hope that we created permanent full-time jobs that could support a family for $375,000 of the public's money."

Barclays also laid off a boatload of people recently, with another wave of layoffs coming.

So why should we trust the jobs claims of those pushing stadiums and shopping malls in Flushing Meadows knowing this info about the huge arena that was built in Brooklyn? McJobs are McJobs.