Upstate New York’s largest metro areas experienced little or no job growth during the year ending in June, according to the latest state Labor Department employment report.
New York’s long-term trend of regionally uneven growth—with job gains downstate and very little growth north of the mid-Hudson Valley—was even more accentuated in the June payroll data (which, as always should be noted, will be subject to “re-benchmarking” early next year).
The state as a whole gained 120,700 private jobs, a 1.5 percent rate of increase during a period when employment in the nation as a whole grew by 2.1 percent. But as shown in the Labor Department summary table at the bottom of this post, virtually all of the added jobs were created downstate: in New York City (+98,500 jobs, or 2.7 percent), Long Island (+10,600 jobs, or 0.9 percent), and the lower Hudson Valley (up a combined 17,300 jobs).
The Albany-Schenectady-Troy area, boosted in recent years by massive state investments in high tech projects, lost 900 private jobs (-0.2 percent) on a year-to-year basis. Buffalo and Rochester registered relatively small gains of 4,300 jobs (0.9 percent) and 2,500 jobs (0.6 percent), respectively. Syracuse private employment was unchanged.
New York’s worst-performing region remains the Southern Tier, where the Binghamton area was estimated to have lost 1,300 private jobs—or more than twice the number that will be created by a new Dick’s Sporting Goods distribution center announced by Governor Andrew Cuomo earlier this week. Elmira’s decrease 0f 700 jobs was even larger in percentage terms (-2.1 percent). Glens Falls, north of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy region, also had a job decrease.
During the same period, there were jobs gains in the smaller metros of Ithaca, Kingston and Watertown.
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