A day before the U.S. Commerce Department revealed that the economy added 243,000 jobs in January, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned that hiring in New York and the Hudson Valley has lagged over the past six months.
Between December 2009 and December 2011, the state”™s private sector regained 183,600 ”“ or 58 percent ”“ of the jobs that were lost during the recession.
During that same period the state as a whole saw the return of 46 percent of all jobs that were lost, well above the national average of 34 percent, DiNapoli noted in his Feb. 2 report.
However, the state”™s private-sector employers posted a net loss of 11,200 jobs since last July, triggering what DiNapoli described as a noticeable slowdown.
“After a strong first half of 2011, job growth in New York was markedly weaker during the second half of the year, raising concerns about the pace of the recovery in 2012,” DiNapoli wrote.
The region that includes Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties ranked among the lowest of the state”™s metropolitan areas in the proportion of jobs recovered since the recession.
After losing 28,800 jobs between July 2008 and December 2009, the lower Hudson Valley added a net 4,000 jobs in the two years since, with the region”™s job recovery rate of 13.8 percent ranking far behind the state and New York City, which recovered jobs that were lost during the recession at rates of 46.3 percent and 51.6 percent, respectively.
In the three-county region, “Gains in education, health services and tourism have been partially offset by sizable losses in government, construction and manufacturing,” DiNapoli wrote.
Unemployment in the region fell to 6.4 percent last December from 7.2 percent in December 2009;Â however, the report noted that much of that decline was due to a drop in the state”™s labor force rather than employment increases.
Compounding the slow recovery, the financial securities industry, which DiNapoli called “the state”™s economic engine” and which accounts for a third of the state”™s gross state product, has lost 4,300 jobs since last April.
Pace University economist and Lubin School of Business finance professor Ronald Filante said the financial sector”™s struggles have had a sharp effect on the region”™s economy.
“I think the local economy will be slower to recover or will recover to a less robust outcome because the financial services sector is retrenching,” Filante said.
Job losses on Wall Street have likely impacted spending and tax revenue as well due to the typically high wages in the financial sector, Filante said.
“Let”™s remember that not only are we talking about the number of workers, but if those workers are paid two or three times what the average worker is paid then the impact is that much more dramatic,” he said.
DiNapoli also said in his report that the average salaries of the jobs created over the past two years are more than 40 percent lower than the average salaries of those jobs that were lost during the recession.
New York voters remain optimistic.
In a poll released Jan. 26 by the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, 52 percent of respondents said they thought the worst of the state”™s economic troubles were in the past and 44 percent said they thought the worst was still ahead.
When the institute posed the same question two months prior, the responses were nearly reversed, with 54 percent then saying that the worst was yet to come and 42 percent saying the worst had passed.
