Loss of high-end jobs on LI seen as worrisome

The losses that the Long Island job market sustained during the last recession could have ill effects for the local economy for some time, according to interviews with economists and an analysis of state Labor Department data.

Local economists cite two troubling characteristics of the job market here. The higher-wage employment sectors sustained the highest losses in the recession, and job growth now on Long Island is dominated by lower-wage categories.

For example the Island's highest paying sector, financial activities, which includes banking, securities and real estate, had 69,600 jobs in March, down 6,600, or about 9 percent, from March 2008, before the recession hit here. By contrast, in health care, where pay is considerably lower, jobs were added at about the same pace that financial activities lost them. Health care had 196,300 jobs in March, up 17,100, or almost 10 percent, from March 2008. Financial activities' average annual salary on Long Island is just under $90,000 versus about $47,000 for the education and health-services category, according to the Labor Department.

Nationally, the recession spanned from December 2007 to June 2009.

The recession didn't produce the worst job declines the Island has suffered in recent decades. That happened in the early 1990s, when the Island was coping with both a recession and a massive defense-industry downsizing that wiped out mostly high-paying manufacturing jobs, said Pearl Kamer, chief economist for the Long Island Association.

But other high-paying jobs, which economists consider key to high-cost areas like Long Island, picked up the slack such as those in law, accounting and banking, Kamer said. Not so now. "It's the deteriorating quality of jobs that is of concern in the current economic recovery," Kamer said.

Some good news

Michael Crowell, senior economist at the state Labor Department's Hicksville office, echoed that sentiment.

"It's certainly good news that we are adding jobs instead of losing," he said. "But I'm really concerned about the type of jobs that are being added."

Also of concern is the high unemployment rate. It was 7.1 percent in March, compared with 4.5 in March 2008.

"It's quite a bit worse than we were used to on Long Island in good times," Crowell of the Labor Department said.

But Kamer said she discards "the unemployment rate totally" because it doesn't include discouraged workers, or those who have stopped looking for jobs, and is therefore artificially low.

Private sector growing

The good news is that the Island's private sector is still growing after suffering about three straight years of annual job losses during the recession.

Local recessions aren't typically dated.

But, said economist Rae Rosen, an assistant vice president for regional and community outreach at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in Manhattan, "Employment growth is slow, but it's slow everywhere."