economic development
Employment Clusters
Industries can group within an area as a result of several factors including geography, availability of natural resources, presence of intellectual assets, presence of a workforce with a high concentration of a particular skill, and the unique historical development of a region. Areas with such concentrations tend to attract similar industries or supporting industries; this provides a competitive advantage from the local pooling of talent and expertise.
Information presented in the table on the right represents data assembled by the NYSDOL regarding industry concentrations in Central New York (Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga and Oswego Counties). The table lists the industry concentration within the region, the jobs and wages produced by each, their regional ranking and their Location Quotient (LQ), which are measures of employment concentration in a regional economy. More specifically, they compare the concentration of industry employment locally to that of the U.S. If an industry’s LQ is greater than 1.0, the region’s labor market contains a higher concentration of jobs in that industry relative to the U.S. In the next table, information is presented regarding the region’s economic clusters by industry sector.
In reviewing the data, it is important to note that Central New York has several industries with a positive location quotient including biomedical, distribution, electronics and imaging, forest products, industrial machinery, and services and materials processing. Several other industries have high employment concentrations that suggest the area has a critical mass of skills that could be leveraged to expand activity in that sector through local growth or outside investment.
Regarding the “clean economy,” the Brookings report underscores the importance of this cluster in the region’s economy by noting that the Syracuse metropolitan area ranks 55th among the 100 largest metro areas with 9,648 clean economy jobs or 3.0% of all jobs in the region. On this measure of concentration, Brookings indicates that the region ranks 11th in the nation and that between 2003 and 2010 the Syracuse metro added 1,376 clean economy jobs for a 2.2% growth annually during this period, placing the region 64th and 80th respectively for those categories. It was also noted in the report, that on average each clean economy job in Central New York generated $10,317 in exports per job.
Another major focus area for the region involves the 1,200-acre White Pine Commerce Park and plans to establish a major semiconductor manufacturing cluster in the region. Complementing this effort is the growth of a uniquely identified “Smart System – IoT cluster in the region with links to the unmanned aerial system and 5G technologies that are being deployed in CNY and across the nation.
