New York State has made progress in regaining jobs since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement released Thursday that the latest data, which is from January, shows the statewide private sector job account totaling more than 8.3 million jobs, the highest level on record.
Overall, the state has recovered just over 1.9 million private sector jobs since the peak of the pandemic in April 2020.
Hochul said the recovery in jobs followed initiatives that included a $1 billion Small Business Rescue Plan and a $450 million “Bring Back Tourism, Bring Back Jobs” recovery package.
In the Rochester metro area there have been gains as well, although New York State Labor Analyst Kurt Meichtry said the local region still has to gain a bit more ground before recovering all the jobs that were lost.
“We're right there,” said Meichtry. “We're not completely back. We're 99% of what we were pre-pandemic. So if we continue to grow, we'll get over that up in the next few months.”
He said that one of the sectors of the economy that has seen a healthy bounce-back in jobs that had been lost during the pandemic was leisure and hospitality.
“Those first few months of the pandemic, leisure and hospitality lost, I think it was a bit over 50% of the jobs due to the quarantine and shutdown. So it’s been on the upswing since then, and this month was the first month where we’re back to those levels,” noted Meichtry.
The health care sector also saw additional gains in the Rochester area in January. Overall, the region saw an increase of about 6,500 private sector jobs in January compared to January of 2022.
