Manufacturing employs about 460,000 people in New York State, spread across over 17,000 establishments. From bakeries in Manhattan, to paper mills in Potsdam, to machine shops in Buffalo, to the shop floors of semiconductor, adhesive, and medical device producers, the Empire State’s manufacturers are dispersed across the state’s diverse economic landscape.
Each of the state’s ten economic development regions has a unique configuration of manufacturing establishments, varying greatly in the number of establishments, average establishment size and representation of different industry segments.
Manufacturing Jobs and Industries by Region
The graph below offers a window into this composition. New York City, Long Island, the Finger Lakes, and Western New York are home to the greatest number of manufacturing jobs. On a statewide basis, the five manufacturing industries with the greatest number of jobs are Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing (NAICS 334), Food Manufacturing (NAICS 311), Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing (NAICS 332), Machinery Manufacturing (NAICS 333), and Chemical Manufacturing (NAICS 325). Together these account for over half of New York’s manufacturing employment. The graph notes the industry with the most manufacturing employment for each region.
Size of Manufacturing Establishments
As is the case in most of the country, New York’s manufacturers are overwhelmingly small and mid-sized. Of the state’s nearly 17,000 manufacturing establishments, 76% have less than 20 employees, and only 91 have more than 500 employees. The smallest manufacturers (1-19 employees) represent half or more of each region’s total manufacturing establishments. New York City and to a lesser extent Long Island have even greater proportions of manufacturers with less than 20 employees.
Trends Since 2010
Over the past six years, the biggest manufacturing job gains in New York State have occurred in Food Manufacturing, Beverage and Tobacco Product Manufacturing, Wood Product Manufacturing, and Furniture and Related Product Manufacturing. Meanwhile, job losses have been concentrated in Chemical Manufacturing, Transportation Equipment Manufacturing, Printing, Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing, and Apparel Manufacturing.
New York State Strengths
Location quotients (LQs) are a way of quantifying how concentrated a particular industry is in the state as compared to the country. By calculating the industry’s share of state employment with its share of national employment, we can see what makes New York State unique in comparison to the national average. Looking at all manufacturing industries on a 3-digit NAICS level, Apparel Manufacturing the only industry with a significantly high LQ (2.0)—that is, it’s the only manufacturing industry in which New York employs a significantly higher proportion of its population as compared to the proportion of Americans employed by those industries.
The table below does show that New York State job performance in several manufacturing industries is exceeding the national average. The “competitive effect” figures represent the job growth (or loss) in a particular industry that cannot be explained by national trends in that industry or the national economy as a whole—and therefore is due to some unique competitive advantage that New York enjoys. These industries include Food Manufacturing, Beverage & Tobacco Product Manufacturing, Wood Product Manufacturing, and Computer & Electronic Product Manufacturing.
(Note that the competitive effect can be positive even as state employment in the industry declines; that would indicate that the state decline is less than the national decline.)
In a future blog post, FuzeHub will explore New York’s strengths and areas of opportunity at more specific industry levels.