Economy of Buffalo, New York
The Buffalo area economy consists of a mix of industrial, light manufacturing, high technology and service-oriented private sector companies. Instead of relying on a single industry or sector for its economic future, the region has taken a diversified approach that have the potential to create opportunities for growth and expansion in the 21st century.[1]
Contents
History
Buffalo and the surrounding area were long involved in railroad commerce, steel manufacture, automobile production, aircraft/aerospace design and production, Great Lakes shipping, and grain storage. Most of these industries have left the city through the years. Major steel production no longer exists in the area, although several smaller steel mills remain in operation. For example, Gibraltar Industries, a leading manufacturer, processor, and distributor of steel products for the building, industrial, and vehicular markets is headquartered in Buffalo. As of the 1950 United States Census, Buffalo was the 15th largest city in the country, the nation's largest inland port (twelfth overall), second biggest rail center, sixth largest steel producer, and eighth largest manufacturer.[2]
Employment
Overall, employment in Buffalo has shifted as its population has declined and manufacturing has diminished. Buffalo's 2005 unemployment rate was 6.6%, contrasted with New York State's 5.0% rate.[3] And from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2006, Erie County had no net job growth, ranking it 271st among the 326 largest counties in the country.[4] Yet the area has recently seen an upswing in job growth as unemployment has dropped to only 4.9% in July 2007 from 5.2% in 2006 and 6.6% in 2005.[5] The area's manufacturing jobs have continued to show the largest losses in jobs with over 17,000 fewer than at the start of 2006. Yet other sectors of the economy have outdistanced manufacturing and are seeing large increases. Educational and health services added over 30,400 jobs in 2006 and over 20,500 jobs have been added in the professional and business (mostly finance) arena.[6]
Life sciences
Buffalo has increasingly become a center for bioinformatics and human genome research, including work by researchers at the University at Buffalo and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. This consortium is known as the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. It also includes: Buffalo Hearing & Speech Center, Buffalo Medical Group Foundation, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, Kaleida Health, Olmsted Center for the Visually Impaired, Cleveland BioLabs and Upstate New York Transplant Services. The DNA samples used in The Human Genome Project were also collected from anonymous donors from Buffalo.
Entrepreneurial resources and life science business consultants accelerate the growth and development of emerging companies found within the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and Upstate New York Region. For example, Buffalo BioSciences is a technology commercialization partner to the New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics & Life Sciences and contributed to the launch and early success of Empire Genomics –- a firm based on research conducted at Roswell Park Cancer Institute by Dr. Norma Nowak[7] enabling the delivery of personalized medicine.
Banking
Buffalo is the headquarters of M&T Bank, a large regional bank with assets over $79B (as of June 2011).[8] HSBC Bank USA has reduced its local operations in Buffalo, and Upstate NY as a whole, as it closed its retail banking centers. Many of the shuttered HSBC retail banking centers in upstate were acquired by First Niagara Bank (see below). Other banks, such as Bank of America and KeyBank have corporate operations in Buffalo. Citigroup also has regional offices in Amherst, Buffalo's largest suburb. Buffalo has also become a hub of the debt collection industry.[9]
First Niagara Bank recently moved its headquarters to downtown Buffalo from nearby Lockport. First Niagara has branches from Buffalo to Albany, New York, and since September 2009 has had branches as far south as Pittsburgh. On September 10, 2009, First Niagara announced the relocation of its corporate headquarters from Lockport to downtown Buffalo. The company says facilities in Lockport will remain open and fully staffed.[10] First Niagara, which had been considering expanding into Western Pennsylvania for some time,[11] benefited from PNC Financial Services being required by the United States Department of Justice to sell off 50 National City branches in the Pittsburgh area and 11 more branches in and around Erie to competitors,[12] since the two banks had significant overlap in Western Pennsylvania and had potential antitrust issues in that area. First Niagara took advantage by buying 57 of the 61 National City branches from PNC that had to be divested after PNC acquired National City with funds from the $700 billion bailout plan after National City became a victim of the subprime mortgage crisis. The move affected the area by creating 200 more jobs, some in the Buffalo area.[13] On July 31, 2011, it was announced First Niagara had acquired all of HSBC Banks Western New York branches; after closing and selling some branches to its competitors its total number in Upstate New York had almost doubled.[14]
Other
Buffalo is home to Rich Products, one of the world's largest family-owned food manufacturers.[15] Canadian brewer Labatt moved its US headquarters to Buffalo in May 2007.[16] This is in large part due to Buffalo's location directly in the middle of the Northeastern Trade Corridor. The city is the heart of the Canadian-American corridor. Over 80% of all U.S.-Canada trade occurs via border crossings in the eastern United States and with five bridges to Canada, the Buffalo area is one of the key eastern border crossing locations. Cheese company Sorrento Lactalis is also based in Buffalo.
New Era Cap Company, the largest sports-licensed headwear company in the United States, is based in Buffalo. It opened new headquarters in 2007 in the former Federal Reserve Building in downtown Buffalo.[17]
The windshield wiper maker Trico, founded in Buffalo by John R. Oishei, operated three major manufacturing facilities but has since closed all of them and moved operations to Mexico. In 1998, the company head office moved to Rochester Hills, Michigan.[18] Trico's Plant No. 1 was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and in 2014 was being re-developed by the State University of New York at Buffalo. The John R. Oishei Foundation is western New York's largest and the new Women's & Children's Hospital, scheduled to open in 2015, will be named the John R. Oishei Children's Hospital.
For many years, Buffalo was the nation's second largest rail center, after Chicago. Peaked traffic reached during World War II, but declined soon after the war.[19] Through the 1960s and 1970s freight traffic via Buffalo declined, air travel and the New York State Thruway took railway passengers away as well.[19] By 1980, the rail hub in the city was gone.[19]
Del Monte Foods' Milk Bone dog biscuits are still manufactured in a small factory on the city's East Side.
Regionally based insurance companies also have maintained their headquarters in Buffalo, New York. There's Merchants Insurance Group and Lawley Insurance. Merchants Insurance Group is a property and casualty insurance company that provides commercial, personal property and casualty insurance throughout the Northeast and North Central United States. Lawley Insurance provides commercial insurance, employee benefits, risk management and personal insurance.
Delaware North Companies are headquartered in Buffalo.[20]
Standard of living
The loss of traditional jobs in manufacturing, rapid suburbanization and high costs of labor have led to economic decline, making Buffalo one of the poorest among U.S. cities with populations of more than 250,000 people. An estimated 28.7–29.9% of Buffalo residents live below the poverty line, behind either only Detroit,[21] or only Detroit and Cleveland.[22] Buffalo's median household income of $27,850 is third-lowest among large cities, behind only Miami and Cleveland; however the median household income for the metropolitan area is $57,000.[23]
This, in part, has led to the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area having the most affordable housing market in the U.S. today. The quarterly NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI) noted that nearly 90% of the new and existing homes sold in the metropolitan area during the second quarter were affordable to families making the area's median income of $57,000. The area median price of homes was $75,000.[citation needed]
Buffalo faces issues with vacant and abandoned houses, as the city ranks second only to St. Louis on the list of American cities with the most vacant properties per capita. Since 2000, the city has torn down 2,000 vacant homes but as many as 10,000 still remain. Mayor Byron W. Brown recently unveiled a $100 million, five-year plan to demolish 5,000 more houses.[24] The city's move away from heavy industry and toward a service and bioinformatics economy[citation needed] has brought improved air and water quality, which benefit not only residents and tourists but the bioregion as a whole. In July 2005, Reader's Digest ranked Buffalo as the third cleanest large city in the nation.[25]
Buffalo's economy has begun to see significant improvements since the early 2010s.[26] Money from state governor Andrew Cuomo, plans for different construction programs, and hundreds of new jobs have brought strong economic change to the area.[27]
Principal employers
According to the City's 2013 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,[28] the principal employers in the Buffalo Metropolitan Area are:
| # | Employer | # of Employees |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | State of New York | 15,123 |
| 2 | Federal Executive Board (United States of America) | 11,183 |
| 3 | Kaleida Health | 10,000 |
| 4 | University at Buffalo | 6,733 |
| 5 | Catholic Health System | 6,628 |
| 6 | Employer Services Corp | 6,363 |
| 7 | M&T Bank | 5,140 |
| 8 | Tops Markets | 5,058 |
| 9 | Buffalo City School District | 4,949 |
| 10 | Erie County | 4,203 |
References
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- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.[dead link]
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ KDKA-TV[dead link]
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ First Niagara to buy HSBC bank branches wivb.com Published 2011-07-31. Archived May 27, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Rich Products Corporation :: Our Business/ Archived October 6, 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ LABATT USA: Company opens new headquarters in Buffalo » Business » Tonawanda News/ Archived October 24, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ History Timeline of the New Era Cap Company/ Archived July 30, 2013 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ [1]/ Archived June 26, 2012 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Buffalo 3rd Poorest Large City. WGRZ TV. Retrieved October 14, 2008.
- ↑ Buffalo falls to second-poorest big city in U.S., with a poverty rate of nearly 30 percent. Buffalo News. Retrieved September 2, 2007.[dead link]
- ↑ Vacant Houses, Scourge of a Beaten-down Buffalo. New York Times. Retrieved September 14, 2007.
- ↑ Derek Burnett,America's Top Five Cleanest Cities. Reader's Digest. Retrieved January 4, 2007. Archived July 9, 2006 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ http://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/Home/Leadership/City_Comptroller/economy
- ↑ http://www.buffalonews.com/feed/signs-of-economic-revival-finally-appear-20140125
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
