HV Community Leads As NY Economy Hits New Heights

The Kingston metro area had the most rapid growth in New York state in private-sector jobs in 2018 as New York’s economic expansion continued, state labor officials announced Thursday. Last year, the state’s annual private sector job count reached 8,181,000, a new, all-time high.

Job highlights since January 2018:

• Over the past 12 months, no metro areas in New York State lost private sector jobs.
• Fourteen metro areas in New York State added private sector jobs over the past year. The most rapid employment growth was in these metro areas:
  • Kingston (+3.5%)
  • Albany-Schenectady-Troy (+2.7%)
  • Syracuse (+2.4%)
  • New York City (+2.2%)
  • Glens Falls (+1.9%)

Other Hudson Valley metro areas were nowhere near as hot:

• Dutchess-Putnam: +0.8%
• Orange-Rockland-Westchester: +0.7%

Also in 2018, the state’s unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent, its lowest annual rate on record.

The data released Thursday comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The job count is based on a payroll survey. The federal government calculates New York State’s unemployment rate based partly upon the results of the Current Population Survey.

"These numbers are proof positive of the success of our long-term strategy of boosting economic progress across every corner of the state rather than in just a few regions, as has been the case in decades past," said Gov. Andrew Cuomo after the the labor department released its report. "This success is bolstered by the strength of bottom-up, regionally focused economic development and transformative investments in infrastructure and new and emerging industries to support generations of future economic growth.

"But our work must not and does not end. We will continue to build on our transformative progress to drive growth across the state, create and retain jobs and keep all economic arrows pointed in the right direction."

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