ALBANY – New York City has as many private sector jobs now as it did before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the recovery has been uneven across economic sectors.

“The city’s job recovery is good news,” state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said of an analysis released Friday.

“We are seeing strength in the securities, transportation, warehousing, and office sectors, but retail, restaurants, construction and tourism continue to lag the national recovery.”

The findings highlight the Big Apple’s ongoing struggle with the economic damage caused by COVID the month after the federal government officially ended a three-year national emergency.

New York City has 99.4% of the total number of private sector jobs that existed when the first reported cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in the Empire State in March 2020.

Securities jobs increased by 6.41% between March 2023 and March 2019, with 192,700 positions currently filled, according to the analysis.

Office jobs jumped 3.72% during that same period — to 1,513,100 overall despite the current 22% vacancy rates in commercial office spaces.

Transportation and warehousing also grew slightly to 130,300, but other sectors have not been so lucky.

The city has a total of 4,078,300 private sector jobs now compared with 4,035,500 four years ago – a 1.06% bump overall, according to the analysis.

DiNapoli warned that embattled industries like the arts, hospitality, and retail will need to regain more jobs to ensure the long-term survival of the positions they have already recovered,

“We need these sectors, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers, to also regain their full pre-pandemic strength to ensure the city’s economic recovery is more robust and inclusive of all New Yorkers,” he said.