According to preliminary figures released Thursday by the New York State Department of Labor, the number of private sector jobs in New York state has increased. Experts say while the impacts of the pandemic are still being felt, there is some good news.

“If you go back to 2019, we’re still down about 100,000 jobs across New York state,” said Fred Floss, professor of economics and finance at SUNY Buffalo State University. “Trying to get New York back, it’s Upstate New York that’s lagging behind New York City, Rochester has probably the furthest to go.”

The number of private sector jobs in New York state increased over the month by 5,500, or 0.1%, to 8,260,900 in November 2023. The number of private sector jobs in the U.S. also increased by 0.1% in November 2023.

Meanwhile, New York state's private sector jobs increased by 79,000, or 1.0%, over the year in November 2023, lagging slightly behind the 1.6% increase in the number of private sector jobs in the U.S. 

When all non-farming jobs are taken into account, the increase was just over 100,000 jobs, or 1%.

Private education and health services saw the biggest uptick with a gain of over 126,000 jobs while trade, transportation and utilities saw the biggest drop losing over 35,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate meanwhile also ticked up, the statewide unemployment rate increased from 4.2% in October to 4.3% in November. New York City’s unemployment rate decreased from 5.4% to 5.3%.

One issue that hiring managers continue to face is the impact of remote work. Technology and services company TTEC is opening a new call center in Malta. Human Resource Manager Jessie Perry says organizations need to push the benefits if they want to recruit employees to come back to the office. 

“I think that we can see while it might not be the same, I think we can really succeed in bringing people into onsite locations and offer them what it is that they might have been missing by working remotely all of those years,” she said.

Floss says there are economic implications of whether employers are able to convince employees to come back to the office in less companies needing office space for workers.

“A real concern is what’s going to happen to property tax revenue,” he said. “Maybe not this year or next year, but as reevaluation comes in of this commercial property, we’re going to expect the values to drop.”

He says a bright spot is that New York state is focused on growing finance and manufacturing jobs, telling Spectrum News 1 the financial sector has stabilized, and while manufacturing jobs overall declined this year the state is succeeding at strategically growing that in tech hubs like Buffalo and Syracuse. 

“We’re putting good paying jobs at the forefront here,” he said. “They’re coming back, and in many cases they are already back to new highs.”

The State Department of Labor says the number of private sector jobs in New York state is based on a payroll survey of New York businesses conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.