Job Growth But Not in Long Island,New York

Newsday reports:

Pall Corp. has seen plenty of growth in the past five years. As the East Hills-based filtration company made numerous acquisitions across the country, it simultaneously spread its reach across the globe. And Pall also has made a significant effort to move its people and resources closer to its customers, while using technology for more effective communication across its offices.

The result: Pall's payrolls grew by 22 percent since 2001, as the company now has 11,000 employees. But those gains aren't coming home to Long Island.

Indeed, Pall's Long Island workforce dropped by 25 percent in the same time period, to a staff of 750, despite or, in part, because of its growth elsewhere.

"There's no doubt we're doing more with less," said Pall spokeswoman Pat Iannucci. "Technology and extremely dedicated employees make this possible."

Added Iannucci: "Long Island is certainly expensive, and we're all seeing the consequences of this."

Pall's story is told over and over again at the top publicly traded companies across Long Island. While they are creating jobs nationally and internationally, fewer of them are adding jobs closer to home. Though there's no one reason for that trend, the consequences are significant, as the Long Island job market remains relatively weak, and the area's economy won't grow as fast if the largest public companies aren't expanding here.

In many cases, these companies have acquired businesses elsewhere, grown abroad, or moved personnel to be closer to clients. Add to that the well-known refrain about the high expense of doing business on Long Island, the difficulty of recruiting people to come here and some labor shortages in some industries, and clear trends emerge:

Nearly three-fourths of Newsday's top 50 publicly traded Long Island companies -- 37 in all -- have reduced the share of their employment that is based on Long Island since 2001. Only 11 of the top 50 now base more than 50 percent of their payrolls here.

On net, the top companies lost 2,106 Long Island employees in the past five years, not including the three companies that did not exist in 2001.

The high cost of doing business just isn't where companies want to growth.Blue America is headed for even further declines because unions and artificially high costs can't compete in a global economy.