New York’s child care sector continues to face lingering challenges post-pandemic including child care deserts, low wages for child care workers and high prices that are putting a financial strain on families statewide. Yet even with high prices, many providers operate on thin margins, with financial and regulatory pressures that make expansion or even operating at capacity challenging. Vigorous federal support and additional State efforts are necessary to improve the availability of child care.
Reports
See Audits to search for audits related to State agencies, NYC agencies, local governments, school districts and public authorities.
January 2025 —
Homelessness in New York State has grown sharply, more than doubling between January 2022 and January 2024. A key reason for the increase has been the mass arrival of asylum seekers to New York in this period. While the homelessness increase was driven mostly by New York City, the rest of the State’s regions also experienced increases during this time period.
January 2025 —
A look back at some of the major accomplishments of the Office of the New York State Comptroller in 2024.
January 2025 —
Nonprofit organizations in 2022 provided 1.3 million jobs to New Yorkers, just over 1 in 6 private sector jobs in the State. However, nonprofits in New York have been shrinking since 2017, both in number of establishments and in number of jobs, while expanding in the rest of the nation. This report analyzes the most recent employment and wage data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for charitable organizations identified as 501(c)(3)s for the period 2017 through 2022, the latest data available.
November 2024 —
Farming in New York plays a critical role, both as an economic engine for communities and as an essential part of our food supply system. This report provides a comprehensive breakdown of farming across upstate New York, Long Island and New York City, including an analysis of State programs and tax benefits for farmers.
November 2024 —
The benefits from four major social insurance programs provide crucial financial support during difficult times in the lives of hundreds of thousands New York workers and their families each year. This report analyzes benefits provided for representative workers under unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, temporary disability insurance and paid family leave.
November 2024 —
The Office of the State Comptroller prepares this report as part of the "Quick Start" process established in the State Finance Law. The report includes revenue and spending projections through SFY 2026-27.
October 2024 —
The State’s employment picture has changed in significant ways since 2000 with the health care and social assistance industry increasing its share of total employment as manufacturing and financial activities shrank. Since the pandemic, the State has taken longer than the nation to regain the jobs lost; the nation fully recovered by June 2022, while for New York, recovery did not occur until April 2024. Despite the relatively slow employment recovery, growth in wages paid to workers has outpaced inflation.
October 2024 —
Chronic absenteeism rates among New York public and charter school students increased sharply as schools transitioned back to in-person learning after the COVID-19 pandemic subsided and remained high with nearly one in three students chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year. The rates were higher for high school students at 34.1%, 7.6 percentage points more than elementary and middle school students.
September 2024 —
The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the State of New York for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024.
September 2024 —
The Annual Comprehensive Financial Report for the New York State and Local Retirement System (the System or NYSLRS) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024.
September 2024 —
Higher education institutions provide tremendous value to New York’s local economies and the State’s overall economic health through employment, wages, student spending, and more. The sector employed over 296,000 people in 2023, paying wages of around $26.5 billion, but still has over 13,000 fewer jobs than in 2019. Maintaining a vibrant higher education system is critical to New York’s future.
September 2024 —
The New York State Legislature amended the State Finance Law in 2015 by adding a new Section 8-c providing for the establishment of a statewide electronic system to help detect and prevent fraud, waste and abuse in government spending and to help avoid improper payment of public funds.
August 2024 —
In SFY 2022-23 (April 1, 2022 through March 31, 2023), OSC completed 10 audits of preschool special education providers' expenses submitted to SED. These audits cumulatively identified $7.7 million in recommended disallowances, or more than 13 percent of the total claimed expenses of $57.7 million for the audit period.
August 2024 —
New York State has seen a surge in hate crimes over the last five years with 1,089 reported instances in 2023, marking the highest number since data collection and annual reporting were mandated by New York’s Hates Crimes Act of 2000. As the number of hate crimes has grown, these crimes are increasingly targeting people rather than property, with most attacks against Jewish, Black and Gay Male New Yorkers.
August 2024 —
As required by Section 196 of the Navigation Law, the Comptroller prepares an annual report to the State Legislature and the Governor. The report includes: a description of the costs and damages paid by and recovered for the Fund; the monies spent pursuant to Section 186 (including amounts spent for oil spill prevention, training activities and equipment purchased), and the economic and environmental impacts on the State.
July 2024 —
The Climate Action Plan Progress Report for the New York State Common Retirement Fund highlights the Fund’s recent efforts to address climate risks and opportunities.
July 2024 —
New York’s Clean Energy Fund (CEF), established in 2016 to help New York reach its clean energy goals, has made good progress on reaching its goals for distributed solar capacity and leveraged funds, but is behind in meeting its energy efficiency targets for 2025. Since 2016, the CEF spent $3.4 billion through 2023 and has achieved 45% of its total efficiency goals.
July 2024 —
This report focuses on the condition of local bridges using data from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Bridge Inventory. New York has made progress in recent years. Since 2017, the share of local bridges in poor condition has fallen from 12.1 percent to 10.0 percent. The federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) has directed federal funds to a variety of infrastructure projects, including bridge projects. The IIJA created the Bridge Formula Program, which provides $2.0 billion in federal funding for New York bridges from federal fiscal years 2022-2026. New York State’s Bridge NY program facilitates federally funded local bridge projects. Since 2016, Bridge NY has funded more than 800 projects with a total investment of nearly $1.7 billion. For county-level bridge data across the State, see our interactive map | download data [xlsx].
July 2024 —
State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2023-24 was another productive year for the Office of Unclaimed Funds, returning $504 million to rightful owners.