NEW YORK CITY-Job growth in New York City has remained robust during the first half of the year, but despite the additions in industries like technology, retail and creative services, office leasing has stayed somewhat flat. According to a new report from Eastern Consolidated, the city added 10,200 jobs in April, posting a year-to-date increase in jobs of 54,900 - equating to the total jobs added in all of 2011.
At the same time, the job growth isn’t reflected in major lease deals, says Barbara Byrne Denham, chief economist at Eastern Consolidated. “The underlying story is that a lot of the job growth is in tourism related industries, film production, private education…industries that aren’t necessarily office-based,” she tells GlobeSt.com. “That’s driving part of the strong job growth.”
According to Eastern data, the professional services industry added 5,000 jobs in April, showcasing a gap between the gains in the broader professional business services sector and that of underlying industries. The phenomenon, she says, is due to the fact that technology firms that are not easily classified. “They [tech firms] are locating here, expanding here or even moving back here,” Denham says. “There’s hundreds of them, and that’s affecting job growth and that hasn’t caught on in terms of solid office leasing because it is so small and businesses are in small incubator space or SoHo space.”
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The table (above) ranks industries by gains and losses since the bottom of the respective recessions shows how well New York City’s economy has fared this year, especially compared to the US. The results – based on data released from the New York State Department of Labor that was seasonally adjusted by Eastern – most of New York’s industry growth rates are in the double digits while US growth rates are in the single digits. New York City’s losses, however, have exceeded those for the US in government and manufacturing.
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According to Eastern, the two industries that are growing at unprecedented rates are retail and restaurants. Together, the retail and restaurant industries have added 77,000 jobs since 2007, a growth rate of 16%. Most industries recorded a loss for the five-year period including Wall Street that shed 28,000 jobs during the recession. “New York City is totally a different story when it comes to retail because we have so much tourism here, and that drives a lot of the retail employment in Manhattan and retail sales,” Denham says. “We have also have had a lot of retail developments in recent years, which is driving a lot of growth because people used to do a lot of their big shopping outside of the city, and now they are able to do it in the city. It has driven a lot of retail traffic back." |
Out of the entire study, only two industries had sizable losses: wholesale trade (-1,700 jobs) and arts and entertainment (-1,400 jobs). The securities industry was flat in April, but commercial banking added 600 jobs. Click here to view the report.
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