How Amazon Could Help Upstate New York

One of the Thanksgiving meal discussions at my house involved Amazon’s new HQ2 and why Governor Cuomo didn’t get the company to locate its new facility in upstate New York. And, though my argument that upstate metropolitan areas lacked technology focused labor pools of sufficient size to be seriously considered by a technology based firm […]

Reconsidering “Lost Manufacturing Jobs – The Effects of Imports and Increased Productivity”

In a post examining the causes of the decline in manufacturing employment over the past fifty years, I concluded, like other analysts, that although increases in imported manufactured products had caused part of the decrease, most of the drop resulted from productivity increases from automation and process improvements. See for example https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/upshot/the-long-term-jobs-killer-is-not-china-its-automation.html. Because of the emphasis […]

Traded Employment Losses Since 2001 in Upstate New York

Metropolitan areas in Central and Western New York, like others in the Rust Belt that had high concentrations of manufacturing employment, have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs. Ninety-one thousand net manufacturing jobs were lost in the 2001-2010 decade in five upstate metropolitan areas – Utica-Rome, Syracuse, Rochester, Binghamton, and Buffalo-Niagara Falls. […]

Syracuse’s Empty Film Hub

The New York Times carried an article, “Cuomo’s $15 Million High-Tech Film Studio? It’s a Flop,”[1] on August 22nd. The article points out that the Central New York Hub for Emerging Nano Industries, owned by the Fort Schuyler Management Corporation (FSMC), a non-profit subsidiary of the SUNY Research Foundation, is largely vacant, and has housed […]

New York’s Ineffective Business Tax Incentives

In 1987, New York State enacted legislation to create an Economic Development Zones Program, modelled after the enterprise zones concept, championed by Congressman Jack Kemp. Proponents argued that by reducing taxes in specific geographic areas with high concentrations of poverty and unemployment, existing firms would be more likely to create jobs, and other firms would […]