Approaching the fifth Labor Day weekend since the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020, most regions of New York have yet to recover the private-sector jobs lost in the wake of pandemic lockdowns—and the Empire State trails far behind the rest of the U.S., according to the latest state and federal labor statistics.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the state Labor Department in July estimated total private employment at 8.4 million jobs, just 67,800 (0.8 percent) above the February 2020 level. While the nation as a whole recovered its pandemic job losses within two years of the March 2020 outbreak, New York didn’t match its pre-pandemic employment level until March of this year, as shown below.
New York’s job recovery has also been among the weakest compared to other states. As shown below, the Empire State’s employment growth since February 2020 ranked 39th out of 50 states. Among large industrial states, only Illinois ranked lower, with no net job growth during the period. By contrast, job growth came to 10 percent in Texas and 11 percent in Florida; even California, whose pandemic restrictions rivaled New York’s, has experienced three times New York’s rate of job growth.
A tilted job map
New York’s recovery has been notably unbalanced on a regional basis. Shifting the focus to the difference in non-seasonally adjusted monthly job counts for July of this year and the same month back in 2019, before the pandemic, all of the state’s net gain —and then some—occurred in New York City, where private employment rose by 141,500. Including the city’s suburban counties in the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island, the downstate region as a whole gained 167,200 jobs. The job count in the remaining 50 counties in New York—comprising upstate as broadly defined—was still 36,400 below the July 2019 level.
Bill Hammond, the Empire Center’s senior fellow for health policy, notes that healthcare jobs in particular have bounced back from the pandemic much more robustly than the state’s overall employment level. From Bill’s take on the job numbers:
As of July, the number of healthcare jobs statewide was 1.4 million, up 161,300 or 11 percent since the same month in 2019. That equated to 107 percent of the state’s total private sector job growth – meaning that, excluding healthcare, private employment in all other sectors declined.
Within the healthcare sector, employment growth has varied widely by provider type and by region.
- Employment in home health care services has continued to explode, jumping by 109,000 or 41 percent in the past five years.
- Hospital employment also has risen since July 2019, but by a more modest 21,200 or 5 percent.
- Nursing home employment, meanwhile, declined by 18,200 or 15 percent, as the pandemic disruption sharpened a long-term decline.
Regionally, like total employment, growth in the health sector has been overwhelmingly concentrated in New York City, which accounted for 98 percent of statewide healthcare job increases since 2019—including 136 percent of hospital growth (in other words, the city added hospital jobs while the rest of the state was shedding them); and 87 percent of home health growth. At the same time, the city absorbed a disproportionately small 24 percent share of the nursing home job losses.
You may also like
Sorting Fact from Fiction on the Future of Medicaid
As Washington contemplates cutbacks to federal funding for Medicaid, officials in Albany have reacted in two self-contradictory ways.
On one hand, they warn of Read More
The 411 On New York’s 911 Skim
New York for decades has collected, under various names, a special tax on mobile phones. The tax, which today shows up on customer bills as the “public safety communications surcharge,” devolved from being a fee to pay for 911 services to a general revenue source with 911 services as a near second thought. Since 2009, almost half the surcharges paid by customers for public safety communications—more than $1 billion—have been redirected to New York’s general fund. Read More
Immigrant Enrollment in ‘Emergency Medicaid’ Surges to 480,000
One of the biggest drivers of New York's Medicaid enrollment growth over the past decade has been "emergency Medicaid" for undocumented immigrants, newly released state records show.
Read More
Medicaid’s Missing Million
The Health Department has been either unable or unwilling to document the eligibility status of almost one million Medicaid recipients, raising further concern about the possibility of large-scale over-enrollment. Read More
New York’s Medicaid Spiral Is Worse Than Hochul Admitted
Although Governor Hochul said last week that the current trajectory of Medicaid spending is "not sustainable," the upward trend is even steeper than she and her budget director have acknowledged.
Read More
NY’s Road To Electric School Buses Gets Bumpy
New York in 2022 told school districts they’d be barred from purchasing gasoline- or diesel-powered buses after 2027, and instead have to buy electric buses at more than double the upfront cost.
“The purchase of new electric buses will help grow the market,” officials later pledged, “which will in turn help reduce prices.”
Unfortunately for taxpayers, those reductions aren’t materializing—because state officials put the prices, and future increases, on cruise control. Read More
Hochul Shows a Jarring Lack of Direction on Health Care
Financing and regulating health care delivery is one of the biggest responsibilities of state government, yet Governor Hochul had remarkably little to say on that topic in her State of the State speech on Tuesday.
Read More
Hochul’s Pushing Affordability. It Would Cost A Lot.
Governor Hochul is hammering an “affordability” theme in the leadup to Tuesday's 2025 State of the State address. But her campaign, dubbed "Money In Your Pockets," has so far featured little that would reduce the cost of providing, and therefore buying, goods or services in New York.
Instead, the biggest announced and expected elements reflect Albany's waning interest in growing the state economy—and a greater appetite to redistribute what it produces. Read More