NEW YORK CITY-As New York City employment levels continue to improve this year and next, research from Marcus & Millichap shows that Manhattan rents will skyrocket – up to a 10% percent increase. Also on the move, the study suggests, will be vacancy rates, as job growth stimulates renter demand.

Peter Von Der Ahe, VP of investments at Marcus & Millichap, tells GlobeSt.com that in this new landlord’s market, rolled back concessions will also contribute to rental gains. “Last year you saw concessions burn off in the forms of owners paying broker’s fees and landlords that were offering one month or two month’s free rent,” Von Der Ahe says. “In economic terms those are 10 to 15 percent increases in rent.”

It’s all tied, Von Der Ahe says, to the improving employment picture here in the city. According to the study, year over year through the first quarter of 2011, city employers added 45,600 workers to their payrolls – where, during the previous 12-month period, 20,500 jobs were cut in the New York metropolitan area.

Many of these added jobs are in professional and business services – careers better equipped to withstand rent increases for the most desirable Manhattan neighborhoods than other segments. The leisure and hospitality industry, for instance, has lost 3,200 in the past year, while white collar jobs increased by 8,700 during the same period, according to the Marcus & Millichap study.

Von Der Ahe thinks that, for most people, the employment gains and increased rents will create a staggered effect – with real relief in the economic recovery not hitting for some time. “I would say that so far it has been a slow build of momentum in the positive direction, really since the middle of last year and I think that’s continuing,” he says. “I don’t think that it will be until next year that it will feel that way for the general public. That’s when it will really ‘feel’ like a real recovery.”