NYC job growth again in line with national pace; record NYC labor force participation; but a mixed picture for sectors where undocumented migrants tend to work
The pace of New York City job growth picked up moderately in recent months, averaging 9,000 jobs monthly from November through March, a 2.3 percent annual growth trend. This puts the city in line with national payroll job growth for the past four months. Last year, the city’s job growth averaged 6,000 monthly for an annual 1.5 percent pace compared to two percent national job growth.
U.S. economic and job growth in recent months have been exceeding expectations given the Federal Reserve’s continued high interest rate policy. At the same time, the downward trend in consumer price inflation that prevailed from mid-2022 to mid-2023 has stalled, leading the Federal Reserve to hold off on lowering interest rates as had been expected.
The city’s unemployment rate improved to 4.9 percent in March from 5.1 percent in February, reaching its lowest level since September 2022. Labor force participation notched upward to 62 percent in March, the highest monthly level in the 48-year history of the series. The city’s resident labor force rose to 4.17 million in March but is still 100,000 lower than in February 2020. Resident employment was 120,000 lower this March compared to February 2020.
Figure 1 updates our usual sector employment table through March 2024, showing that the city’s total employment level is now 0.3 percent above the February 2020 pre-pandemic level, compared to a net 3.8 percent national job gain. The uneven recovery pattern continues. Employment in the face-to-face set of industries is still 134,000 jobs short of the February 2020 level. There has been a moderate net gain (+18,800) for the remote-working industries. The lion’s share of net job growth over the past four years has come in health care and social assistance employment in the essential industries sector (+150,600 jobs).
Figure 1
On the bright side, there has been some net job rebound, on a seasonally adjusted basis, over the past four months in motion picture production, the performing arts, and local government employment. Conversely, job levels have dipped for professional services, construction, transportation, administrative services, and the other services category that includes hair and nail salons, laundry services, and employment in civic, religious, and professional organizations.
Where are asylum seekers likely working?
As of mid-April, about 190,000 undocumented migrants have come to the city since the spring of 2022, part of the tremendous wave of migrants entering across the southern U.S. border seeking asylum in the United States. Not all of those passing through New York City have stayed, but many have, and roughly a third remain in city shelters. Several thousand children of recent migrants have been enrolled in city schools (the Center’s Inside Schools team has been helping migrant parents navigate the public school system). Some Venezuelan asylum seekers have received work authorization under a Temporary Protective Status granted by the federal government, several thousand others are awaiting approval, and non-Venezuelan migrants are seeking asylum status that would enable them to apply for work authorization.
Although there are no published data on how many asylum seekers are working or in what industries they might be working, we can glean some impressions from estimates made by the Center based on pre-pandemic data. In April 2020, the Center used American Community Survey data on non-citizen immigrant workers by industry to estimate the sectoral distribution of undocumented workers. Using a 2017 estimate from the Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity of 360,000 undocumented workers in the city, we determined that the seven industries shown in Figure 2 employed over three-fourths of undocumented persons working in New York City before the pandemic. The industries are ranked in Figure 2 according to the estimated number of undocumented workers; the total for the seven industries shown was approximately 270,000. The undocumented share of total industry employment ranged from 18 percent in accommodation and food services, to 12 percent in other services, and eight to nine percent in the other industries in Figure 2.
Figure 2
The extent of current employment opportunities in this set of seven industries varies considerably. The second column of Figure 2 shows the net job change among all workers over the 18 months from September 2022-March 2024.
Note that these numbers do not represent the number of recent migrants added to payrolls in these industries; they just report the net job change among all workers over this period. But the net employment changes do provide some idea of the relative current availability of employment opportunities in these industries. As we have noted in recent Updates, most of the city’s job growth over the past four years has been concentrated in health care and social assistance, with 102,300 jobs added over the past 18 months. During this time there has also been some continued employment recovery (+20,800) in hotels and restaurants (accommodation and food services), although as Figure 1 shows, employment in that sector is still below pre-pandemic levels.
It is important to note that the other five industries (other services, construction, retail trade, administrative services, and transportation and warehousing) that have been large employers of undocumented workers in the past have experienced relatively small job gains or continued losses over the past year-and-a-half.
Caveats and additional factors should be kept in mind. The official State Labor Department monthly establishment employment data (such as shown in Figure 1) only count workers who are on an employer’s payroll. These data do not include self-employed workers, independent contractors, or workers paid off the books. It is not unusual for some workers in restaurants, hair and nail salons, landscaping, or construction (not an exhaustive list) to be paid off the books.
Also, many undocumented restaurant workers who were thrown out of work by the pandemic, turned to restaurant delivery work using e-bikes or mopeds. The food delivery industry expanded rapidly in 2020 and 2021 and kept increasing, even before the influx of asylum seekers began two years ago. There are more than 60,000 app-dispatched delivery workers in the city, many of whom are undocumented immigrants. Restaurant delivery has attracted some workers from the recent migrant wave. While delivery workers have benefited from the City’s minimum pay standard, the app companies continue to encourage additional workers to sign up, a practice that can limit the ability of existing workers to perform a sufficient number of trips to maintain their earnings.
New York City has a long history of integrating new immigrant workers into its economy and they have played an important role in revitalizing many neighborhoods. The recent influx also helps offset low levels of immigrant inflows experienced from 2017-21. Yet some industries and communities within the city’s economy have been slow to recover and many workers struggle in precarious positions. Unemployment rates are still elevated for many New York City Black and Latinx workers and economic hardships were rising, particularly exacerbated by rising housing costs, even before the onset of the wave of asylum seekers and continue.
Against this backdrop, sluggish job growth for many of the industries that typically employ undocumented workers should put policy makers and labor standards officials on high alert regarding the potential for displacement of existing workers, including undocumented workers who arrived years ago. Officials also need to guard against the likely exploitation of recent migrants anxious to find work. Wage theft by unscrupulous employers is an all-too-frequent problem requiring vigilant corrective enforcement. Work authorization for asylum seekers and help with English language skills will open up employment prospects in other industries and relieve some of the labor market pressure. But as The New York Times reported recently, work authorization for one group of migrants raises fairness questions for other migrants, including those who have been working in the U.S. for years without access to a route to formal work authorization.