Private sector employment growth in New York State continues to trail the U.S. as a whole, with upstate lagging far behind downstate, according to the latest state Department of Labor (DOL) monthly jobs report.

The state’s January job total was up 2 percent over the same month in 2014, compared to a 2.8 percent gain nationally, as shown in the following DOL table. Eighty-nine percent of the 150,800 new private jobs gained as of January on a year-to-year basis were created in New York City and downstate suburbs, the data also showed.

In addition to issuing employment totals for January, DOL updated its employment statistics for the past few years to reflect its annual “benchmarking” adjustment based on actual unemployment insurance filings by employers.  The result was a fairly significant upward revision in the seasonally adjusted employment totals since 2011.  The Labor Department now says the private sector added 607,000 jobs during Cuomo’s first four years in office, 71,700 higher than the previous estimate.

Even with that revision, the Empire State was about a percentage point below the national average during the period, as illustrated in the chart below.

If New York had matched the national employment increase since 2010, it would now have 62,200 more jobs.

Another continuing trend in the employment data is a stark divergence between upstate and downstate. Here is a table breaking down the change in employment totals by region during a period lining up with Governor Cuomo’s first term—the months of December 2010 and December 2014—and also between 2013 and 2014. (The regional data are available only without seasonal adjustment, and so the four-year total is slightly different from the one presented in the seasonally adjusted estimate):

Empire Center calculations based on NYSDOL data

The Albany-Schenectady-Troy region, which has benefitted from billions of dollars of state-subsidized high-tech investments over the past 20 years, had the strongest performance of the major upstate regions during Cuomo’s first term—but still trailed the national and statewide growth rates for the four-year and one-year periods. The Buffalo-Niagara Falls region, touted as a success story by the governor based on his “Buffalo Billion” economic development programs, did not perform impressively.

Among smaller metro areas, Ithaca had the strongest growth over the four-year period, reflecting in large part the economic activity spun off by Cornell University. The weakest upstate metro areas were Binghamton and Elmira in the Southern Tier, Utica-Rome in Central New York, and Watertown-Ft. Drum in the North Country.