Top 5 Employers in New York: Which Companies Have the Most Jobs?

The largest employers in New York State reflect the demographic and industrial trends away from manufacturing and have moved toward finance, health care and education.

According to the state's Department of Labor, manufacturers dominated the state's top employers list in the 1960s through 1980s, while the latest list doesn't have any manufacturers at all.

The top five private sector employer companies and organizations in New York echo both the history and current trends in the Empire State. Since the state's Department of Labor and many companies consider headcount to be confidential proprietary information, the Center for Governmental Research compiled a list of full-time equivalent employee counts from published information and information from the companies.

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Here are the top five employers in New York:

1. North Shore – Long Island Jewish Health System: Healthcare takes the top two spots in the top employers in New York list. This reflects consolidation in the health care industry as the private practice doctor and single-hospital organization has been replaced by large integrated health systems. North Shore LIJ has more than 2,600 full-time doctors and 12,000 member physicians.

2. Mount Sinai Health System: About 36,000 employees, plus physicians, fellows and residents, Mount Sinai's growth is an example of health care industry consolidation. The organization was created by the merger of Continuum Health Partners and Mount Sinai Medical Center in 2013. Continuum was a joint venture itself, formed in 1997 by the merger of three large New York City area hospitals.

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3. Wal-Mart: Consumer retail is the second-largest industry in New York, and is represented in the employer list by retail powerhouse Wal-Mart. Consumer retail that includes food and beverage tends to perform relatively well during economic downturns compared to the rest of the list, according to the state Department of Labor's Report to the Workforce Development System. Many of these employees are likely part-time workers, however.

4. Verizon New York: Information infrastructure includes business-to-consumer services like residential telephone, Internet and television. New York's large service industry, especially in the time-sensitive financial sector, needs a robust IT and communication infrastructure.

5. JP Morgan Chase: New York is one of the world's most important financial centers. Some of the largest banks and brokerage houses in the world were founded in, or are currently based in, New York. Chase National Bank, founded in 1877, and J.P. Morgan & Co from 1895, along with several other historical New York-area banks and companies, combined over the last several decades of industry consolidation to create the largest bank in the U.S. by assets ranked by Bloomberg.

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