“We must fight for good-paying, high-quality jobs across our region. The manufacturing sector provides these kinds of jobs. A strong manufacturing base is critical to economic growth. This is why I am proud to be a Co-Chair of the bipartisan House Manufacturing Caucus.”–Rep. Tom Reed 

Rep. Reed has been my representative since 2010 when we were in the NY29th. He has been the representative for the NY23rd since 2012. He has worked for more than seven years was to help the constituents of our district. He has met with business leaders, bankers, and small business owners. He has had forums and round tables. He  has had many photo-ops at work places declaring he supports their jobs.

How has that help the us? It doesn’t. The NY-23rd counties, especially the western counties, have been losing jobs and it has not been getting better. We have higher unemployment rates than most of the other NYS Counties.

The following job information was accessed from  New York State Department of Labor,  which updates their information monthly. We see that most of NY23rd has fewer Private Sector jobs in December  2017 than we did in December, 2016.

Here is our counties’ job data as compared to  December 2016. (Please note tha he State provides data for the full Metro Area, not those individual counties. Yates and Ontario are considered to be part of the Rochester Metro Area, since many of the workers are employed in counties other than where they reside. Tioga County is in the Binghamton Metro Market.)

• Cattaraugus  lost 100 jobs (now 31.6k, -0.3%)
• Chautauqua  lost 300 jobs (now 51.5k, -0.6%)
• Steuben lost 100 jobs (now 38.1k, -0.3%)
• Allegany (now 15.7k) and Schuyler County’s (now 4.8k) jobs count didn’t change.
• Chemung gained (1.8k, +2.7%) and now has 37.2k jobs.
• The Rochester Metro Area (including Yates and Ontario Counties) lost 3,500 jobs, (-0.6%) between December 2016 and December, 2017
• The Binghamton Metro Area (which includes Tioga) gained 700 jobs (+0.7%).
• Tompkins County is gaining jobs (now 67.4k) at a rate higher (2.7%) than the state’s rate.
• Seneca County gained jobs at a much higher than the state (+1.5k, +12.8%). It now has 13.2k jobs.  Why Seneca County? The Del Lago Resort & Casino  opened just a year ago (January 28, 2017).

Besides knowing the NY-23rd’s jobs data, we also need to look at our unemployment rates. The Federal unemployment rate is 4.1%.

The good news is that we have only one county with an unemployment rate at 7% or higher–Schuyler. The four western most counties are between 6% and 6.9%. Tompkins is the only county with an unemployment rate less than 4%.

President Trump, and therefore Rep. Reed, are claim that the GOP Tax Plan, Trade Deals,  Immigration reform, and removing regulations will add jobs.  If they are right we should see improvements in both the number of jobs and the unemployment rates throughout the district. We will continue to look at how that plays out in the NY-23rd.

Rep. Reed is going to try to convince the voters that the economy is improving, needs to count on more than small tax cuts before the November election. It will help  him if Private Sector jobs return in the Southern Tier and the Finger Lakes and our unemployment rates decrease.

Other economic factors will play a part of the voters’ mind-set: Health Care costs and benefits, Medicare-Medicaid-Social Security, Price of fuel–for cars and heating, and of course Wages.

The NewNY23rd will keep an eye our economic health between now and November.