The financial services sector added more jobs in February and added more jobs in 2014 than previously expected.
The sector, which is among the city’s biggest users of office space, added 3,600 jobs between January and February of 2015, according to data from the New York State Department of Labor cited by the Wall Street Journal.
“We’re seeing growth in financial services which we really haven’t seen since 2011,” Ken McCarthy, senior managing director of economic analysis and forecasting for real-estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, told the newspaper. “And that’s critical for the office market, particularly Midtown, where those large financial-services firms are located.”
The amount of new jobs in the finance and insurance sub-sector rose by 2,800, which is much higher than the usual 1,000 new jobs that are usually added during that time, the newspaper reported. In all of 2014, the sector added more 8,000 more job than previously reported, according to the newspaper.
As a result, the vacancy rate in Midtown went from 11.5 percent in July to 9.8 percent in December. [WSJ, 3rd] — Claire Moses