Jobless rates up in most area counties

Unemployment rates in most counties in the MidHudson Valley and Catskills were slightly higher last month than they were in September 2018, according to state Department of Labor data released Tuesday.

It was the second month in a row that local jobless rates were generally higher than a year earlier after a lengthy period of declines. The unemployment rates remained low, however, with no local county exceeding 4 percent joblessness.

Only Sullivan County, where one of the state’s four new casinos opened in February

2018, recorded a lower unemployment rate last month than a year earlier.

Ulster County had a September 2019 jobless rate of 3.4 percent, unchanged from September 2018, the labor department said. Dutchess County’s unemployment rate last month was 3.5 percent, up from 3.3 percent a year earlier.

Elsewhere in the region, according to the state labor office, unemployment rates in September 2019 were:

• 3.7 percent in Greene County, up from 3.6 percent in September 2018.

• 2.8 percent in Columbia County, up from 2.7 percent a year earlier. (Despite the uptick, Columbia County’s jobless rate last month was the lowest among the state’s 62 counties.)

• 3.7 percent in Orange County, up from 3.5 percent.

• 3.4 percent in Sullivan County, down from 3.5 percent.

• 3.9 percent in Delaware County, up from 3.7 percent.

The highest jobless rate in the state last month was 5.1 percent in Bronx County, though that was an improvement from 5.2 percent a year earlier.

The statewide unemployment rate in September 2019 was 3.7 percent, up from 3.6 percent in September 2018.