The state comptroller said New York has taken the first steps on a slow road to economic recovery marked by uneven progress across the regions of the state.
Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli in his recent report on economic trends in the state cautioned that the road out of recession “is still winding and potentially perilous” though the recovery “is headed in the right direction.”
DiNapoli noted New York was not hit as hard by the recession as other states, losing 3.8 percent of its jobs compared with a 6.1-percent job loss nationwide. Still, New York lost 336,700 jobs, of which 28 percent have been regained since December 2009, he said.
While private-sector employment has continued to grow since then, especially in tourism, health services and education, the public sector in the same 16-month period lost 28,200 jobs, a 1.9-percent decline. The state unemployment rate, which doubled during the recession, as of March still hovered at 8 percent after peaking at 8.9 percent in September 2009.
After two years of decline, New York”™s Gross State Product grew by an estimated 2.2 percent in 2010, DiNapoli reported. All of the state”™s 12 metropolitan areas showed increase in their Gross Metropolitan Product in 2010. New York City, which includes Westchester and the lower Hudson Valley, had a 2.1-percent increase in GMP from 2009, trailing only the Mid-Hudson and Ithaca areas in rate of growth.
Analysts, though, predict GMP growth will slow in most areas of the state this year, DiNapoli said.
New Yorkers”™ personal income last year rose by 4.1 percent, the second-highest rate of growth nationally after New Mexico, said the comptroller. That followed a 3-percent income drop in 2009 that was the largest income decline among New Yorkers in 70 years.
DiNapoli said the income growth in 2010 is partly due to the highly profitable rebound of Wall Street, whose securities industry is a major driver of the state and city economies.
The securities industry lost 28,200 jobs, or nearly 15 percent of its workforce, in the recession. It has since added 9,700 jobs, amounting to more than one-third of its recession losses. Wall Street companies earned $27.6 billion in 2010, the second-best year on record, DiNapoli said.
“The recovery so far has been a mixed bag,” he said in the report. “Private-sector employment is up while public-sector employment is down. Home values in the major
metropolitan upstate areas rose sharply in the fourth quarter of 2010, but have begun to decline again in the New York City metropolitan area. Rising oil and gas prices, disruptions due to the crisis in Japan and low consumer confidence could hold back economic activity.
“Our economy is improving, but the pace of the recovery is clearly slower than we”™d like,” he said.
