September 4, 2016
It was a long road back, but an analysis of New York State employment data for the seven-county Hudson Valley region shows that we have just about returned to the 1.1 million people employed that we had when the bottom fell out in 2007.
Yet, changes have come as well. In the past 10 years, the biggest job losses in the seven counties of the Hudson Valley were in manufacturing, government, the information industry and in financial activities. The biggest gains have been in leisure and hospitality as well as education and health services. We have indeed moved toward a service delivery economy.
Here is where it gets interesting. The region’s unemployment rate today is 4.3 percent. Some say 4.0 percent is “full employment” since not all potential workers have the skills and abilities necessary to work in today’s jobs. Next, consider that more jobs are on the horizon. Montreign and Veria in Sullivan County and Amy’s Kitchen and Legoland in Orange and numerous other proposals suggest easily another 6,000 new jobs in just these two counties.
If we plan for this appropriately, this is welcome news. More jobs mean more families and more kids to populate our declining school enrollments. More jobs mean more adults to contribute to our stretched tax base.
But if the region is to be at full employment, we need to think strategically – not county by county. Where you live is not necessarily where you work. Just look at Ulster, where 31 percent of the workers travel outside the county to work. Ours is increasingly a regional economy.
Full employment with more jobs to come means a number of things are likely to happen. First, basic supply and demand will force wages up. Depending on whether you’re an employee or an employer this is good or bad news. Generally, more disposable income is a good thing. And for those people who don’t like the government telling them what to pay, this is the free market driving wages up.
Second, high-profile businesses that have the ability to pay higher wages should be OK finding employees. But to the degree they will cannibalize the workforce at existing employers – and given the region’s overall population growth is stagnant – we will need to help these core businesses with renewed efforts to recruit employees and retain current ones. These companies helped us through the past 10 years and are essential in our new service economy. They deserve our best thinking.
Third, there is regional transportation. We do a fairly good job of transporting people within each county, but we do not do as well moving people from one county to the next. We need to think regionally about how to get workers – especially from within cities with higher unemployment – from one county to another.
Workforce housing will also come to the fore. Even if wages rise, we still need affordable places for people to live. Do we really have the right options available?
The issues are many and the opportunities have changed. This is a significant occasion to be better and smarter than we were a decade ago. Carpe Diem!
Jonathan Drapkin is president and CEO of Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress.
