NYC’s Job Growth Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Its Economy Is Booming

(Bloomberg) -- New York City’s 22% job growth since the Great Recession ended in 2009 doesn’t necessarily mean that its economy is booming because workers’ average weekly hours have declined during that span, restraining increases in individuals’ pay, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office.

The agency, a publicly-funded non-partisan fiscal watchdog, reported Tuesday that while New York’s economy created about 715,200 private-sector jobs, producing record levels of employment, the average workweek declined to 34.1 hours in 2018 -- a 4.1% decline since 2008, in a trend that has continued into the first half of this year.

This probably explains why average wages grew by only 2% between 2009 and 2017, the IBO said. Among U.S. metropolitan areas with 500,000 jobs or more, only Dallas-Fort Worth had stronger private employment growth than New York, and none of them experienced a steeper decline in average hours worked, the IBO found.

The impact of the reduced workweek equaled the incomes produced by about a quarter of the decade-long employment gain, or 164,100 jobs, the IBO said. High paying jobs demanding longer hours, such as in the financial industry, had less growth than lower-paying positions in education and home health care, which surged 37%, while the average work week shrank 7.5%, according to the report.

“The decline in average hours worked in the city may partly explain why New York’s long expansion has been accompanied by relatively tepid wage growth,” the report concluded. “With the average number of hours worked decreasing, the local job market may not have tightened as much as the falling unemployment rate implies. Consequently, there would be less market pressure pushing up wages.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flynn McRoberts at fmcroberts1@bloomberg.net, Michael B. Marois, Nikolaj Gammeltoft

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.