Ivy League schools, including Penn, dominate employment in their cities

Ivy League colleges have a major economic impact on the cities in which they are located, taking up top spots on the lists of largest employers in their areas.

In Philadelphia, Penn was ranked as the city’s largest private employer in the second quarter of 2015, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. The University was also Philadelphia’s third largest employer overall, falling behind only the City of Philadelphia and the federal government.

The trend of higher education companies dominating the private sector exists in other cities with Ivy League schools.

Columbia University was New York City’s largest private sector employer in 2014, followed by Consolidated Edison and JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to the New York Department of Labor statistics.

In the smaller cities of Cambridge, Mass. and New Haven, Conn., Harvard and Yale eclipsed public sector employers to rank as the city’s top overall employers, based on data from Yale’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs, as well as the Cambridge Community Development Department. Harvard University ranked as the number one private and overall employer in Cambridge, according to 2015 data. The university had a total of 11,997 employees on its payroll. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology followed as the second largest overall employer in Cambridge, with 8,763 employees in 2015.

As the city’s top private employer, Penn created one out of every nine jobs in Philadelphia, totaling 90,400 jobs created directly and indirectly in 2015.

According to the University’s 2015 Economic Impact report, Penn directly employed 37,000 people, with another 53,000 indirectly connected to Penn through construction, retail and professional service industries. As a result, the University contributed $14.3 billion in 2015 to Pennsylvania’s economy, $10.8 billion of which went directly to Philadelphia’s economy, according to the report.

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