A Robust and Unique Clinton County Workforce

by Colin Read, November 18, 2009

Almost every region’s workforce is unique. The mix of industries responds to the particular resources and history of the region. And emerging industries capitalize on the mix of ages and needs as the community evolves. Projections of workforce needs leverages these coefficients that define the share of the workforce employed in each sector.

Clinton County is part of a larger North Country region that also includes the slightly larger St. Lawrence and Jefferson counties, and the smaller counties of Franklin, Essex, Hamilton, and Lewis. Clinton Country represents 34,653 of the 155,876 individuals employed in the North Country. All of these counties are primarily rural, but they differ in their proportion of private employment.

Fully 77% of Clinton County’s workforce is employed in the private sector. This private employment rate is the highest in the North Country. The two larger counties have about 72% private employment, while the three smallest counties hover just over 50% private employment. The range of private employment remains in a relatively narrow gap from 51% to 73% across the North Country:

 

While the State of New York’s Department of Labor documents employment levels for the North Country, it does not create long term projections for the State or for individual regions. However, we can document average growth patterns by industry in the United States, as projected by Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Institute performed this analysis using North Country-wide employment levels that were updated by the state Department of Labor to 2007. Occupation-by-occupation growth was then extrapolated based on national growth of these same occupations. By using this extrapolation, we are capturing the effect that those occupations that are over-represented in the North Country will create proportionally more jobs for a similar growth rate compared to occupation growth at the national level.

Once we perform this analysis, we can sort occupations in twenty three categories in the North Country, based on the largest expected growth. Not surprisingly, the fastest growing occupations over ten years are the personal care and service occupations, community and social services, and healthcare practitioners and technicians. Fully a quarter of projected workforce needs in twenty three occupation categories fall in to these three categories. The most jobs are expected to be created in the two larger areas of education and office support. However, these two traditionally largest occupational sectors in the North Country are growing at a substantially more modest rate. The following table shows those occupations that are expected to generate growth of more than 500 jobs between 2006 and 2016:

North Country Workforce Needs 2006 to 2016 - Fastest Growing Occupations

 

North Country employment is expected to grow by almost sixteen thousand jobs in the ten years from 2006 to 2016 across the various occupations. We continue to see a trend toward service sector jobs. Only the traditional manufacturing and goods production sectors of construction and extraction demonstrate positive employment growth over the decade. Jobs in production occupations are predicted to decline.

Meanwhile, farming, fishing, and forestry, and the production occupations show a decline in jobs nationwide over the decade in these sectors. Extrapolating this trend on the data in the North Country actually translates into a loss of jobs over the decade. The other sectors losing jobs are:

North Country Occupations Projected to Report Modest Job Gains or Job Losses



Overall, we expect to see a growth of almost 16,000 North Country jobs over a decade to 2016. Clinton County’s share of this job growth, based on its proportion of regional employment, is estimated to be 3,538 jobs. Of course, in a county with a relatively small population, a single event can dramatically change this employment outlook. For instance, Clinton County lost significant employment with the loss of a Strategic Air Command Base in 1995. Similarly, it stood to gain thousands of direct and indirect jobs if a major proposed aircraft repair facility located at the former Air Force Base.

There remains no single entity in Clinton County that with its exit could impose the displacement seen in 1995. The economy in Clinton County is now much more diverse, with almost all major national occupational categories represented in the North Country, and many of those found in Clinton County. However, an extensive infrastructure bestowed upon the County upon the closure of the Air Force Base has left rich opportunities for manufacturing and industrial growth that could allow this community to exceed all job creation projections with a successful program of economic development.

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