Courtesy of Comptroller Stringer’s Office
The new website is available at comptroller.nyc.gov/EconomicData.
By Forum Staff
City Comptroller Scott Stringer recently launched a new website that, according to NYC’s chief fiscal officer, presents data on the city’s economy in an accessible, open, and easy-to-manipulate way.
Stringer said that comptroller.nyc.gov/EconomicData will allow “everyday New Yorkers, policymakers, and economists” to explore the data that underpins the comptroller’s Quarterly Economic Reports and analyze the city’s economic performance over time.
The new site features Stringer’s latest analysis of the city’s economy. According to the comptroller, between July and September 2017, Gotham’s economy continued to grow, expanding by 3.6 percent. And positive leading economic indicators point to future growth in the five boroughs, Stringer noted.
The comptroller’s Quarterly Economic Update is released every three months. According to Stringer, the report tracks the city’s “economic health” and analyzes its economy “in a national context.”
The 3rd quarter 2017 Economic Update’s findings include:
Economic Growth Continued to Speed Up
• In the 3rd quarter of 2017, the Big Apple’s economy grew at a rate of 3.6 percent — up from 3.3 percent in the previous quarter, and triple the growth rate of 1.2 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2016;
Job Growth Remained Robust, but Concerns about Low-Wage Jobs Lingered
• In the 3rd quarter, the city added 29,000 private sector jobs, for a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of growth of 2.7 percent. Job growth in the city accelerated from last quarter, and was once again stronger than the rest of the country, Stringer noted;
• Since the city’s economic recovery began at the end of 2009, it has added an average of 23,500 jobs per quarter — resulting in an average annual growth rate of 2.7 percent. Over the same time period, the national growth rate was just 2 percent;
• The city’s unemployment rate, adjusted for seasonality, was 4.9 percent in the 3rd quarter — up from an all-time low of 4.3 percent in the 1st and 2nd quarters of the year – but initial unemployment claims continue below trend;
• Continuing a years-long trend, most of the new private-sector jobs added in the 3rd quarter — 13,100 jobs, or 45 percent — were in low-wage industries. An almost equal number, 13,000 jobs (44.9 percent) were in medium-wage industries;
• The remainder of the jobs created in the 3rd quarter—10.1 percent—were in high-wage industries. On this metric, NYC is lagging the nation — in the 3rd quarter, 16.2 percent of all new jobs in the U.S. were high-wage jobs;
• Just 36 percent of new jobs were in the export sector, which, as Stringer pointed out, provides goods and services to those outside the NYC metro area, while the remainder were in the local job sector. Export sector job growth typically leads to the creation of more local sector jobs, Stringer explained;
New York City’s Real Estate Markets Showed Mixed Data
• In Queens, however, the average sales price rose 9.3 percent year-over-year to $614,492;
• The rental market was mixed, with the number of new leases in September 2017 declining 10.7 percent in Manhattan, falling 4.1 percent in Brooklyn, but increasing 0.7 percent in Queens, when compared to September 2016;
• Over the same time period, average asking rents fell 0.6 percent in Manhattan and 2.3 percent in Brooklyn, while they grew 3.5 percent in the World’s Borough.
