23 Chapter 2: Economic impacts on the Westchester County economy The first step in estimating the multiplier effects of the college’s operational expenditures is to map these categories of expenditures to the approximately 1,000 industries of the Lightcast MR-SAMmodel. Assuming that the spending patterns of college personnel approximately match those of the average U.S. consumer, we map salaries, wages, and benefits to spending on industry outputs using national household expenditure coefficients provided by Lightcast national SAM. All SUNY WCC employees work in Westchester County (see Table 1.1), and therefore we consider all of the salaries, wages, and benefits. For the other two expenditure categories (i.e., operation and maintenance of plant and all other expenditures), we assume the college’s spending patterns approximately match national averages and apply the national spending coefficients for NAICS 903612 (Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools (Local Government)).8 Operation and maintenance of plant expenditures are mapped to the industries that relate to capital construction, maintenance, and support, while the college’s remaining expenditures are mapped to the remaining industries. We now have three vectors of expenditures for SUNY WCC: one for salaries, wages, and benefits; another for operation and maintenance of plant; and a third for the college’s purchases of supplies and services. The next step is to estimate the portion of these expenditures that occur inside the county. The expenditures occurring outside the county are known as leakages. We estimate in-county expenditures using regional purchase coefficients (RPCs), a measure of the overall demand for the commodities produced by each sector that is satisfied by county suppliers, for each of the approximately 1,000 industries in the MR-SAM model.9 For example, if 40% of the demand for NAICS 541211 (Offices of Certified Public Accountants) is satisfied by county suppliers, the RPC for that industry is 40%. The remaining 60% of the demand for NAICS 541211 is provided by suppliers located outside the county. The three vectors of expenditures are multiplied, industry by industry, by the corresponding RPC to arrive at the in-county expenditures associated with the college. See Table 2.1 for a break-out of the expenditures that occur in-county. Finally, in-county spending is entered, industry by industry, into the MR-SAM model’s multiplier matrix, which in turn provides an estimate of the associated multiplier effects on county labor income, non-labor income, total income, sales, and jobs. Table 2.2 presents the economic impact of college operations spending. The people employed by SUNY WCC and their salaries, wages, and benefits comprise the initial effect, shown in the top row of the table in terms of labor income, non-labor income, total added income, sales, and jobs. The additional impacts created by the initial effect appear in the next four rows under the section labeled multiplier effect. Summing the initial and multiplier effects, the gross impacts are $111.8 million in labor income and $19.1 million in non-labor income. This sums to a total impact of $130.8 million in total added income associated with the spending of the college and its employees in the county. This is equivalent to supporting 1,479 jobs. 8 See Appendix 2 for a definition of NAICS. 9 See Appendix 5 for a description of Lightcast’s MR-SAM model.
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