Coming on the heels of Pattern for Progress' daylong conference on housing at Marist College and news that consumer confidence is ebbing in reverse proportion to rising fuel costs, Marist's School of Management released its "2007 liconomic Report of the Hudson Valley" June 21.

While dozens of statistics and graphs were included in the 129- page summary of the state of the Judson Valley, prepared by Christy Huebner Caridi, head of Marist's Bureau of liconomic Research in the School of Management, the importance of housing - its affordability, availability and ratio of income to mortgage payments - played a pivotal role in the report.

Joan Pagones, town of Fishkill supervisor who has been lauded for her municipality's pro-affordable housing stance, said at Pattern's conference, "There's a problem with the term 'affordable housing.' Everyone thinks of a tenement building in the South Bronx, instead of just housing that everyone can enjoy."

Marist's report bore out much of what Pattern's keynote speaker Hebert Yaro of the Manhattan-based Regional Plan Association told 300 attendees last month: The time has come for mid-Hudson communities to stop pulling up the drawbridge and start letting affordable housing into their communities.

WORK FORCE DEMOGRAPHICS SHIFT

Marist reported an overall reduction in the Hudson Valleys labor force, from 1,217,647 in 2006 to 1,203,650 in 2007. The 13,997- person decline was the first significant decrease since 1994; concomitant with the drop of the number of persons willing and able to work was a 12,587 (1.1 percent) reduction in the number of jobs.

The Putnam, Rockland and Westchester statistical area saw the largest increase of persons employed (11,300), while the cities of Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh and Middletown lost jobs.

While employment in the private service-providing sector grew, manufacturing jobs declined. According to the report, the region added three jobs in the private service sector for each manufacturing job lost but the average wage for one manufacturing job was equivalent to 1.62 jobs in the service- providing industry.

The highest-paid private sector jobs by industry were in management in fields like finance and insurance and technical services, with the majority located in Westchester, followed by Orange, Rockland and Dutchess. Westchester was the only county in the region with a concentration in these industries above the national average, while Dutchess was the only county with a concentration in manufacturing employment above the national average, the majority attributable to the presence of IBM's Fishkill and Poughkeepsie operations.

WHERE THE JOBS ARE

Westchester's job market had the highest rate of compensation for all industries included in the Marist study. In the management and enterprise category, Westchester led at $209,301; followed by Rockland ($99,564); Orange (84,516); Putnam ($74,567); Dutchess ($53,784); and Ulster ($46,388). Dutchess and Ulster also accounted for the greatest jump in five-year growth in this sector, by 22.63 percent and 22.11 percent respectively. Overall, the Hudson Valley experienced a 5.95 percent increase in net earnings in 2005-2006, while New York state fared a bit better at 6.50 percent, slightly more than the national average of 5.66 percent.