For a comparison between the US overall and its largest citywhen it comes to employment recovery lately, look at a pair ofnumbers that seemingly aren’t too far apart: 60,000 and 69,000. Theformer is the number of jobs that private-sector New York Cityemployers added during the first four months of 2012, while thelatter is the total number of jobs that were created from sea toshining sea during the month of May.

To illustrate how far apart those two numbers are in reality, dosome simple multiplication and see what nationwide job growth wouldlook like if it matched New York City’s. Even if you balanced outthe private-sector gains with public-sector downsizing—which in thecity’s case produces a still-impressive four-month total of54,900—you’d need to average about 515,000 new jobs per monthnationally. The actual numbers, of course, fall wellshort.

“The historic statistics show that New York has not enjoyed afour-month streak of this magnitude since the 1950s,” wrote BarbaraByrne Denham, chief economist at Eastern Consolidated, in a reportreleased just before Memorial Day weekend. She added, “Once again,these results defy the national employment trend that hasdecelerated over the last two months.”