Mayor Michael Bloomberg warns of job riots in New York City

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday compared the jobs crisis in the United States to the circumstances that produced recent riots overseas.

"You have a lot of kids graduating college, [who] can't find jobs," Bloomberg said during his weekly radio show. "That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."

According to CNN, Bloomberg was responding to a question about the U.S. poverty rate, which rose to 15.1% in 2010, the highest level since 1993.

"The public is not happy," Bloomberg said. "The public knows there is something wrong in this country, and there is. The bottom line is that they're upset."

According to The New York Daily News, Bloomberg, an independent, gave President Barack Obama credit for coming up with his recently proposed jobs bill.

"At least he's got some ideas on the table, whether you like those or not," Bloomberg said. "Now everybody's got to sit down and say we're actually gonna do something and you have to do something on both the revenue and the expense side."

Bloomberg also warned that the jobs crisis will have consequences far into the future.

"The damage to a generation that can't find jobs will go on for many, many years," he said.

According to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday, 2010 was the third straight year in which the poverty rate increased. Nearly one in six Americans were in poverty in 2010, or about 46.2 million people. Also in 2010, real median household income in the United States fell 2.3 percent to $49,445.