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| Ithaca Metro Area |
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| Tompkins County Partly due to the prevalence of higher education institutions as employers, roughly half of Ithaca-area adults hold college degrees—nearly double the nationwide average. Median household income, though, is below par: $45,000, compared with $50,000 for the nation as a whole—also evidently reflecting the large presence of college students. Not surprisingly, metropolitan Ithaca’s key industry is education and health services, which accounts for slightly over half of all private-sector jobs, compared with just 17 percent nationwide. The prevalence of this sector tends to make the local economy less vulnerable to economic downturns. During the past recession, the Ithaca metro area registered relatively mild job losses of less than 2 percent, compared with 3.5 percent for the state a whole and 6.7 percent nationwide. Since local area employment bottomed out in the summer of 2009, it has grown at a 1 to 2 percent annual rate, surpassing its pre-recession peak by the middle of 2010. Home prices nearly doubled during the 2000-2006 housing boom but declined more moderately than for the nation as a whole thereafter, falling by 15 percent between 2006 and the beginning of 20111. Recent Trends Thus far in 2011, private-sector employment has continued to expand at a more than 1 percent annual rate, reaching new highs. Moreover, state and local government employment has declined only modestly, in contrast with other parts of the state. Most of 2011’s job gains have been driven by the area’s key education and health services sector. Leisure and hospitality and manufacturing have also added jobs. Home prices, which had fallen to a six-year low in early 2011, have edged up in recent months. _______________________________ 1Trends in home prices referred to here are all based on repeat-sales indexes from CoreLogic.
August 2011 |
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