Magic Pot of Jobs

While jobs in New York increased during August, the state’s unemployment rate also increased.

Private sector employment in New York state increased by 3,000 jobs, or less than .1 percent, to 7,261,200 jobs. However, the state’s unemployment rate increased from 5.2 percent in July to 5.8 percent in August. According to a press release from the New York State Department of Labor, this is the state’s highest unemployment level since June 2004, and the highest monthly increase in unemployment in more than 17 years.

“New York State’s labor market indicators reported mixed signals in August,” Peter A. Neenan, director of the Division of Research and Statistics, said in the release. “Although the state did add 3,000 private sector jobs, the unemployment rate increased from 5.2 percent in July to 5.8 percent in August. This 0.6 percentage point jump represented the largest monthly increase in the state’s rate since January 1991.”

Much of the state’s unemployment increase can be attributed to New York City, which saw unemployment rise from 5 percent in July to 5.8 percent in August. This is the largest monthly unemployment increase for the city on record. Excluding New York City, the rest of the state saw unemployment jump from 5.3 percent in July to 5.7 percent in August. In comparison, in August 2007, New York state had an unemployment rate of 4.6 percent, while New York City had an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent.

Although unemployment jumped, the state did manage to add some jobs. Since August 2007, New York has added 39,700 non-farm jobs and 32,500 private sector jobs. However, since July of this year, the state lost 29,400 non-farm jobs and 7,700 private sector jobs.

Industries with over-the-year job gains include:

education and health services adding 37,400 jobs

leisure and hospitality adding 11,500 jobs

government adding 7,200 jobs

other services adding 4,800 jobs

information adding 2,900 jobs

professional and business services adding 2,800 jobs

trade transportation and utilities adding 2,400

natural resources and mining adding 200 jobs

The only industries to see job losses since last year are: manufacturing by 17,900 jobs, financial activities by 9,400 jobs and construction by 2,200 jobs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 9:59 am and is filed under Job Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.