CNY loses industrial jobs in face of Upstate gains

Central New York couldn’t keep pace as industrial employment grew in the Upstate region over the last year, according to a manufacturing publication.

The 2013 New York Manufacturers Register from Evanston, Ill.–based Manufacturers’ News, Inc. reported that Central New York hosted 98,013 industrial workers in August of this year. That’s down 2.4 percent from August of 2011.

The decrease came as upstate New York added 1,361 industrial jobs, an increase of 2.7 percent over last year. Upstate’s Adirondack region was a part of that gain with a total of 50,117 industrial jobs, up 2.7 percent year-over-year.

Manufacturing employment in the state as a whole was nearly unchanged, according to the register. New York has 16,922 manufacturers that employ 733,548 workers, it said.

“New York continues to see its manufacturing sector improve, with fewer losses reported over the past couple years and a slight gain reported for this survey period,” Manufacturers’ News President Tom Dubin said in a news release. “Despite its high business costs, the state still has the advantage of a highly educated workforce and access to capital.”

Industrial sectors topping New York’s employment charts included printing and publishing, which provided 116,441 jobs, and industrial machinery and equipment with 78,845 jobs. Electronics wired in with the third-highest manufacturing employment level in the state at 71,519 jobs.

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com