Gannett's Jay Gallagher must be spinning a bit. He wrote late last week about the failure of Upstate New York, presenting the Business Council's perspective, and today he writes about the Fiscal Policy Institute's rather different take on the economic health of Upstate New York. Gallagher writes:
Wages for the average worker in New York went up by 1.7 percent last year after adjusting for inflation, the first hike in four years according to a new report.
In addition, job-creation figures for the chronically depressed Upstate region improved slightly compared to downstate and the rest of the country over the last two years. And those figures may continue to improve as the drop in manufacturing jobs eases and much of the rest of the nation suffers from the bursting of the real-estate bubble that never inflated Upstate.
Thriving? No, certainly not. But we may winding up a decline in manufacturing that the rest of the country is starting to see, and we didn't have much of a housing bubble here. The Business Council, unsurprisingly, isn't interested in the proposals the FPI makes for improving the situation, but there's a lot here worth contemplating as we try to figure out what path Upstate should take.
Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton is celebrating additional state funding for breast cancer support groups.
Posted by simon at September 3, 2007 12:51 PM in Ithaca Journal , New York State , economy , politics (state)