New York City has created more jobs over the past five years than during any five-year period in the last half century. But the city is not pulsing with the same boomtown swagger it radiated in past growth spurts.

What’s missing? Wall Street.

The big investment banks and brokerage firms used to form the powerful engine that pulled New York’s economy out of recessions. During the boom years of the 1990s, the high-paying securities industry accounted for more than 10 percent of all of the jobs added in the city’s private sector. This time around, it has contributed less than 1 percent.

To city officials and economists, this is extraordinarily good news. For the first time in decades, New York is proving that it can grow at a rapid pace without leaning on Wall Street. The city has added about 425,000 jobs since the end of 2009, raising total employment to 4.1 million jobs.

Though New York is in the midst of a strong expansion, the atmosphere is different from 1999, at the height of the tech-stock bubble — or even 2007, before the housing bubble burst. Financiers are not throwing themselves $3 million birthday parties on Park Avenue, as Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chairman of the Blackstone Group, did.