From New York City north along the Hudson River to Sullivan County, about 137,000 jobs disappeared over a 15-year period as the result of business establishments moving to other parts of New York or the United States.
The Empire Center for New York State Policy calculated the figure using data from Dun & Bradstreet, tracking some 2.4 million businesses the past two decades, including launches, demises, contractions, expansions and physical movements.
The only two regions to gain jobs from establishments, including intra-state moves, were Long Island and the Finger Lakes.
N.J., Conn. scooping up N.Y. jobs
As a percentage of total employment, New York”™s net job migration loss was the largest of any state, the Empire Center found, with New Jersey gaining the most jobs at New York”™s expense. Connecticut attracted the second largest number of jobs due to companies relocating from New York, followed by Florida.
Including in-migration, expansions and startups, Florida led the nation with a 55 percent increase in jobs during the period studied by the Empire Center. New Hampshire led all northeast states with a 20 percent gain in jobs by those factors, while Rhode Island placed dead last in the nation with a 0.6 percent contraction.
New York ranked 48th, sandwiched between Connecticut and Massachusetts, while New Jersey was 44th.
New York has failed to do a good job of nurturing small and start-up firms that are a crucial source of seed corn for future economic growth, according to J. Scott Moody, an economist with the Maine Heritage Policy Center and author of the Empire Center report. Specifically, he cites the migration of jobs to other states; the poor ratio of firm births to firm deaths; and the relatively low proportion of self-employed workers and small firms as weaknesses that New York needs to address.
Expansion of existing firms was the leading source of employment growth in New York, creating more than 900,000 more jobs on a net basis when factoring in company contractions as well. Still, that was not nearly enough to make up for the state”™s job migration losses, according to the Empire Center, or its failure to nurture more start-ups.
While company expansions added more than 48,000 jobs in management on a net basis between 1993 and 2007, New York lost nearly 10,000 jobs in management and public relations due to companies migrating elsewhere.
Data has its limitations
The data is not without its hiccups ”“ the third largest category of net migration loss was in the field of real estate agents and managers ”“ a curious inclusion, given the need for buildings to be sold and managed by on-site agents.
In an interview, Moody acknowledged the limitations of the data in some respects ”“ for instance, cemetery management falls under the real estate management category. A cemetery management company, he noted, could relocate its employees into a new facility on the other side of a border ”“ even if its “inventory” remained behind.
By the same token, Moody said the Dun & Bradstreet database includes information not encapsulated in his report ”“ for instance, employees that are relocated within a company to another facility elsewhere, a constant threat in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey given the large number of corporations with far-flung operations.
“The ”¦ database is an open book right now,” Moody said. “It”™s literally that new, and people are just starting to get their hands around this data.”
