Rochester among N.Y. metro areas topping 3% income growth

WASHINGTON – Per-capita income in four of New York’s 12 metropolitan areas grew slightly faster than the national average of 3.3 percent in 2012, according to the Commerce Department.

Syracuse (3.7 percent), Glens Falls (3.6 percent), Rochester (3.5 percent) and Ithaca (3.4 percent) were all slightly above average in income growth among metropolitan areas, the department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reported.

Kingston (3.2 percent) and Buffalo-Cheektowaga-Niagara Falls (3.1 percent) were just below the national average.

“Per capita” is all income divided by population, or what every single person would earn if it was divided equally. It is a commonly used economic statistic that helps to gauge a geographic area’s standard of living.

Thomas Dale, spokesman for the Bureau of Economic Analysis, said Syracuse ranked No. 117, Glens Falls ranked No. 135, Rochester No. 152 and Ithaca ranked No. 161 among the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas.

Ithaca’s labor market has been dominated by health care and higher education, “both of which have jobs that pay on the higher end,’’ said Linda Barrington, executive director of Cornell University’s Institute for Compensation Studies.

Overall, the New York metro areas “are not far out of line” with the rest of the nation, said James Parrott, chief economist at the New York-based Fiscal Policy Institute.

Only the Watertown-Fort Drum area experienced a decline in per-capita income. Much of that 2.2-percent decrease was linked to a 4.6-percent decline in military earnings, the report said. Fort Drum is a major Army base.

“It would be nice if per-capita incomes were growing 5 (percent) and 6 percent everywhere,” Parrott said. “It’s not a robust recovery anywhere, except in the resource-rich areas.”

Two metropolitan areas in Texas — Midland and Odessa — registered the fastest growth in personal income nationally, boosted by the oil and natural gas industries. Per-capita personal income grew by 12.1 percent in Midland and by 11.5 percent in Odessa.

Oil and gas also drove incomes higher in three metropolitan areas of North Dakota, with Grand Forks increasing by 10.5 percent, Bismarck by 10.1 percent and Fargo by 8.3 percent. Incomes in non-metropolitan areas of the North Dakota rose by 26.3 percent.

New York also has a vast reservoir of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale that runs through the state’s Southern Tier. But the state has a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, the controversial but widely used method of extracting natural gas trapped in shale deposits.

Parrott said there are trade-offs when a local economy is based on oil and gas production.

“You have to allow for the fact that energy extraction almost everywhere follows a boom-bust cycle,” he said. In addition, environmental considerations lead to certain long-term costs, he said.

In the Southern Tier, per-capita personal income rose 2.9 percent in the Binghamton metro area and 2 percent in Elmira.

Elsewhere upstate, per-capita income rose 2.1 percent in the Utica-Rome metro area and 2.5 percent in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area.

The greater New York City and northern New Jersey metro area had a 2.6 percent increase in per-capita income.

Among New York’s 62 counties, Chenango County between Binghamton and Utica had the largest jump in per-capita personal income — 4.9 percent to $36,987. But Chenango remained among the bottom half of counties in per-capita income.

Manhattan led the state with the highest personal per-capita income of $119,347 followed by Westchester ($77,153), Nassau ($70,761), Putnam ($57,431) and Rockland ($56,230).

In western New York, Monroe had the highest per-capita income of $46,105. Monroe’s 3.9 percent increase in per-capita income was higher than the 3.5-percent increase throughout the Rochester metro area.

In a separate report released in September, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said the Ithaca, Albany and greater New York City metropolitan areas led the state in economic growth last year, with each topping 3 percent.

The slowest-growing among 12 metro areas were Binghamton and Watertown-Fort Drum, where economic activity increased less than 1 percent.

Elsewhere, economic activity grew by 2.2 percent in Rochester, 2.7 percent in Buffalo and 1.4 percent in Elmira.

Ithaca’s economy grew 16.7 percent over the five years covering 2007 through 2012, demonstrating an average 3.3 percent rate of growth despite the national setback caused by the Great Recession that began in December 2007 and ended in June 2009.

Elmira’s economy grew almost as much — 16.6 percent — over the five years.

The Watertown-Fort Drum area led the state in economic growth from 2007-2012 with a 26.1-percent increase in economic activity. That slowed significantly last year.

BTUMULTY@Gannett.com

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