The charts and tables in this section are based on private establishment data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, or QCEW, as prepared by the New York State Department of Labor in cooperation with the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The base period of comparison is the first quarter of 2010, when the three-month average of payroll employment as measured by the QCEW reached its post-recession low. The end period is the first quarter of 2018.

(See “Research Note” at the bottom of this post for more.)

Tracking the Employment Recovery
2010-2018

As illustrated in the following chart, total private-sector employment growth in the upstate region since 2010 has been about 6.3 percent—barely one-third the U.S. growth rate of 17.8 percent, and even further below the downstate growth of 21.2 percent.

Source: NYSDOL, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

Private-Sector Job Growth by County

The county-by-county breakdown of private job growth across the state is illustrated in the map below, and detailed in the table that follows.

Source: NYSDOL, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

As detailed above, the state as a whole has gained 1.1 million private-sector jobs since 2010, a growth rate of nearly 17 percent.  The 12-county downstate region—New York City, Long Island and the Lower Hudson Valley—accounted for 985,000, or 88 percent, of the increase, a growth rate of 21 percent. Upstate’s estimated growth rate was a much more modest 6.3 percent, or 130,108—barely two-thirds the increase recorded in Brooklyn (Kings County), and only one-third the jobs increase in Manhattan (New York County) alone.

New York’s statewide private employment growth rate ranked 33rd out of 50 states. The downstate region’s employment growth rate was higher than all but a dozen states. However, the upstate job growth rate rate was lower than all but three states—Wyoming (1.5 percent), West Virginia (1.6 percent) and Alaska (4.8 percent).

Non-recoveries

Private-sector payroll employment hit a pre-downturn peak in early 2008. Measuring from that base, as shown in the table below, private employment in 23 of New York’s 62 counties had yet to recover to pre-recession levels as of early 2018.

The urban cores

The table below breaks down private job totals for New York metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, as well as for the state and nation as a whole. As shown, private employment during the recovery has actually declined in three metro areas (Binghamton, Elmira, and Watertown-Ft. Drum), and in two micro areas (Jamesrtown-Dunkirk-Fredonia and Olean). The Southern Tier, stretching along the Pennsylvania border from the Binghamton region west to Jamestown, has turned in the weakest job growth of any region. This is also the area of the state that stood to gain the most economic activity from hydraulic fracturing of Marcellus Shale natural gas deposits, which was banned by the state at the end of 2014.

Research Note

The QCEW collects employment and wage data from employers covered by New York State’s Unemployment Insurance Law. It covers about 97 percent of all workers, excluding only some agricultural workers, railroad workers, private household workers, student workers, the self-employed, and unpaid family workers.  The QCEW is a more accurate measure of employment because it is an official count of the workforce—as opposed to the Current Employment Survey, or CES, the source of the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, which is based on a statistical sample of employers. The BLS conducts a benchmark revision to the prior 15 months of CES estimates every March using the QCEW data.

In the tables and charts above, the full national, state and local QCEW published by the BLS is the source of job counts for the U.S. as a whole and for other states, while the New York statewide, county and metropolitan area data are from the state’s own QCEW reports. Job totals in the county and metropolitan tables don’t precisely match because of differences in the way payroll jobs are assigned to geographic areas by the Labor Department.