Government and NGOs a growing part of North Country economy

The New York state Department of Labor is a font of fantastic information about where the North Country’s economy is going.

A new data set just compiled by their Lake Placid-based economist Anthony Hayden includes some particularly fascinating numbers.

Across the entire North Country region, government now provides roughly 30% of the jobs.

Here’s the shocker: Most of that big spending isn’t state or Federal, it’s local.

More than 28,000 North Country workers draw a paycheck from a local town, village, county or school district – and from their neighbors’ property taxes.

Another 14.4% of the region’s jobs are provided by non-profit groups, many of them funded through taxpayer dollars.

That means the for-profit private sector now provides only a little over half of the employment (86,000 jobs) in our part of New York state

That compares with government agencies and NGOs at roughly 69,000 jobs.

One other wrinkle: Government workers out-earn private-sector employees significantly, accounting for 29% of the jobs…and 35% of the take-home pay.

So here’s my question: Is this sustainable? And if budget cutting becomes a serious priority for Albany or Washington, how vulnerable is our region’s job base?