Current Employment and Historic Trends in the Fashion District

Looking at employment in the Fashion District area reveals an interesting mix of employment in fashion related and non-fashion industries. As it has been for several decades, the Fashion District remains the home of New York's bustling fashion industry. However, it seems that the concentration of neighborhood jobs within fashion-related industries has been shrinking, as factories are being replaced with a more diverse range of tenants.

A Note about the Data

The employment analyses in this study relied on two sources of data not only to provide a profile of employment in the Fashion District today, but also to see how the profile has changed over time. First, the current employment profile was derived from data provided by Claritas, a for-profit provider of demographic and business data. Claritas data tends to be more comprehensive than publicly available data sources, as it counts workers covered by unemployment insurance as well as those who are not. In addition, Claritas data can be restricted to small geographic areas, allowing the study team to focus in on current employment conditions within the BID boundaries.

However, Claritas data is not available in time series fashion. Thus, the study team was unable to use Claritas data to make comparisons of employment in the BID over time. Since trend analysis is an important part of the study of the ongoing evolution of the Fashion District, the study team has incorporated comparisons of employment data reported by the New York State Department of Labor (DOL) at various years between 1988 and 2000. However, because DOL data is not available for areas below the zip code level, the analysis of changes in employment over time is based on Zip Code 10018, an area a bit larger than the BID. In addition, the DOL data set used in this analysis, DOL employment and wages series, only tracts employees covered under unemployment insurance and thus excludes certain classes of workers.

Current Employment Profile

The current employment profile within the Fashion Center BID shows that fashion-related industries still account for the largest share (46.6 percent) of the area’s employment, which totaled 106,020 workers in 2001 (Claritas 2001). Employment in wholesale trade of apparel, apparel retailing, apparel manufacturing and textile manufacturing - what can be considered an approximation of the "fashion industry" - accounted for 49,438 jobs in 2001. Employees of apparel wholesalers made up the largest single employment group, followed next by apparel manufacturers.

Despite the apparent distinctions made by these apparel-related category titles, in the BID the actual functions of employees in the fashion industry do not necessarily sort out quite so neatly. Careful observation of the firms listed among the apparel wholesalers, manufacturers, and retailers suggests that many of the employees within each of these categories is likely involved in the design and marketing of apparel, rather than actually selling or sewing clothing. These suspicions are confirmed in the analysis of space utilization, which follows in next section.

Chart 1
Employment in the Fashion Center, 2001

Non-fashion industries accounted for the remaining 56,582 jobs found in the BID, more than half of the total employment base. While no single industry dominates the "non-fashion" category - there are 43 non-fashion industries represented in the area - a few individual sectors do have a significant share of the area’s employment base. One example is Business Services, which accounts for 11,439 employees (10.8 percent). Another example is Engineering/ Accounting/Research, which had 3,404 employees in the BID (3.2 percent of the total).

Employment Trends Since the Late 1980s

The Fashion District area has undergone significant changes in terms of employment since the late 1980s. According to the New York State Department of Labor (DOL), employment in Zip Code 10018 (encompassing the BID area as well as blocks west) was 90,435 in 1989. Over the intervening years employment fluctuated, falling to 81,000 in 1992 and then climbing once again to reach 88,320 by 2000. Over this time, the dominance of fashion-related activities in the Zip Code area has slowly waned, and employment in non-fashion industries now accounts for more than half of the jobs in the neighborhood. According to the DOL, in 1988 apparel/textile manufacturing, wholesale apparel trade and apparel retailing accounted for 50.4 percent of total employment in Zip Code 10018. However, by 2000 fashion-related industries’ share of total employment had dropped off to 43.7 percent. The overall number of fashion-related jobs in the Zip Code area also fell, dropping 15.3 percent from 45,537 in 1989 to 38,556 in 2000. Most of this decline is attributable to substantial losses in employment among apparel manufacturers, who saw employment totals fall 30.6 percent (21,550 in 1989 to 14,601 by 2000).

While employment among fashion-related businesses in this neighborhood has declined, the number of jobs in service sectors has been on the rise since the late 1980s; significant gains in employment among communications firms, holding companies and other investment offices, depository institutions, non-depository credit institutions, real estate firms, recreational service firms, health service providers and social service agencies have increased the share of non-fashion industries in the neighborhood. Modest growth seen among educational service firms also contributed to this trend.

Chart 2
Change in Employment in Selected New York City Industries,
1988-2000

Just as in the Fashion District, both Manhattan and New York City overall experienced significant job losses in fashion-related industries. Most of these losses can be attributed to the steep decline seen in apparel manufacturing employment. Employment among apparel manufacturers in New York City fell dramatically, dropping 42 percent from 100,365 jobs in 1988 to 58,337 by 2000. The rate of decline has been even steeper in Manhattan, which lost a total of 33,072 jobs in apparel manufacturing, resulting in an employment drop of almost 49 percent. The textile manufacturers also suffered sharp declines in New York City since 1988, with employment falling off 62.8 percent by 2000. Apparel wholesaling employment also declined over this period, although at a significantly slower rate - in New York City, the drop was relatively modest at 11.1 percent. Only apparel retail has seen growth in this period. Since 1988, apparel retailers (which in New York City include many American design firms) have seen an increase of 10,181 employees in New York City - representing growth of 23.4 percent.

Comparing Changes in Employment in New York City and the Fashion District, Selected Industries (1988 - 2000) (See Table 1)

Given the patterns exhibited in fashion-related industries both in the Manhattan and citywide economies, the employment trends experienced in and around the Fashion District are not surprising. The substantial drop-off in apparel manufacturing seen in New York City overall was echoed in zip code 10018, which saw apparel manufacturing employment drop 6,949 apparel between 1989 and 2000, a 30.6 percent decline. The same similarity can be seen among textile manufactures, who suffered dramatic losses throughout New York City and Manhattan, and also saw employment fall over 60 percent in the Fashion District area, reaching an employment low of just 469 in 2000 (New York State Department of Labor).

Just as the citywide trends in decreasing employment among apparel and textile manufacturing have been echoed in the Fashion District, so too have some of the employment increases seen throughout New York City. Many industries that saw increases in citywide employment totals - such as holding companies and other investment offices, real estate, recreational services, health services and social services - also showed growth in the Fashion District. In fact, as Table 1 shows, some of these industries showed particularly strong growth in the Fashion District, which indicates the area’s appeal to employers in a wide variety of industries.

However, it seems that this appeal is not universal. Despite realizing strong employment gains in certain growing New York City industries, the Fashion District missed out on economic expansion enjoyed by some of the City’s most dynamic employment sectors. Industries including business services, legal services, motion pictures, engineering, accounting & research services, and educational services all saw employment totals rise between 10 and 100 percent in New York City from 1988 to 2000. Yet, Fashion District firms in these industry categories lost employment or experienced much lower levels of growth than seen Citywide.

Table 1 - Comparing Changes in Employment in New York City and the Fashion District, Selected Industries (1988 - 2000)

Comparing Changes in Employment in New York City and the Fashion District, Selected Industries (1988 -2000) (See Table 2)

The Fashion District’s sluggish employment performance within some of the most dynamic industries in New York City suggests that the area is failing to live up to its full economic potential. Firms chose to locate or expand elsewhere in New York City rather than in the Fashion District, despite the convenience of the area to numerous modes of mass transit and the diverse office product offered at prices several dollars per square foot below adjacent midtown neighborhoods.

Interviews with property owners and managers indicated several reasons why the Fashion District is under-performing in terms of attracting growing industries: obstacles to converting space for office use, a lack of retail opportunities and restaurants, congestion and discontinuity associated with trucks and loading docks that mar the streetscape, lack of vibrancy in comparison to the nearby Times Square district, lingering questions about safety and illegal drug activity (especially around Eighth Avenue). These concerns highlight obstacles to realizing further economic development of the Fashion District. Unless these hurdles are overcome, the Fashion District may well repeat its lackluster performance among many of the industries that have the greatest probability of achieving future growth in New York City.

Table 2 - Comparing Changes in Employment in New York City and the Fashion District, Selected Industries (1988 -2000)

You can download this document as a PDF (2.9MB)