NYS Forum Project Management Workgroup Presents:
Project Spotlight
April 4, 2023 – 12:00 pm – 12:30 pm

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Office of the New York State Comptroller

The presentation spotlights the Office of the State Comptroller’s report on labor force trends in New York City. In this inaugural report, OSC discusses the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on labor force participation trends across the City, the rest of New York State and the nation, with a focus on gender, age, race and ethnicity, education, disability status, citizenship status and household type. Some of these groups have been faced with chronic, systemic inequities. The pandemic exacerbated these inequities and created additional challenges, as family obligations and health concerns have influenced labor force participation rates. While many of the challenges affecting particular demographic groups have been reported at the national level, the more prolonged impact of the pandemic on employment in New York City warranted further analysis and targeted policy responses. The report used the U.S. Census Bureau/Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey, a vast dataset on labor force characteristics, and one that OSC had not used before. As a result, OSC encountered, and eventually overcame, challenges with manipulating and analyzing the data, and telling a cohesive story on critical and complicated aspects of the labor force in New York City.

The presentation discusses the steps of the labor force project from initiation (i.e., developing the research questions, and determining the capacity and roles of the team) to discovery (i.e., gathering, manipulating and analyzing the data, and revisiting the research questions to assess whether the analysis answers the questions) to interpretation (i.e., packaging the results in an understandable, concise manner, and communicating to other staff and policymakers such as the State Comptroller to ensure the message and policy implications are clear) to closeout (i.e., double-checking the data analysis and completing thorough backup, fact-checking the writing, working with the design and communications team to ensure supplemental materials such as press releases, briefings and social media are accurate, and being available for interviews if needed). 

Presenter Bio:
Anita Yadavalli is senior economist and director of the Bureau of Tax and Economic Analysis in the Office of the New York State Comptroller. Prior to coming to OSC, she worked for the National League of Cities as director of research and data analytics. Her areas of research include city fiscal policy, economic development tax incentives, and housing market conditions. Anita received her PhD in economics from Purdue University.

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