Unemployment rates improve across region
County unemployment rates in the Mid-Hudson Valley and Catskills, though still abnormally high because of the COVID-19 pandemic, improved dramatically from July to August, according to data provided Tuesday by the state Department of Labor.
The improvement came after two consecutive months in which local jobless rates increased.
The August unemployment rate in Ulster County was 9.3%, down from 12.4% in July and well below the April peak of 14.6%, according to the labor department. In Dutchess County, the department said, the jobless rate last month was 9.4%, down from 12.5% in July and the April peak of 14.1%.
In August 2019, well before the pandemic hit, the jobless rates in Ulster and Dutchess counties were 4% and 3.8%, respectively.
Elsewhere in the MidHudson and Catskills, according to the labor department, unemployment rates in August 2020 were:
• 9.7% in Greene County, compared to 12.6% in July and the April peak of 14.8%. Greene’s jobless rate in August 2019 was 4.5%.
• 7.3% in Columbia County, compared to 9.9% a month earlier and 3.1% a year earlier.
• 10.5% in Orange County, compared to 13.7% in July 2020 and 4.1% in August 2019.
• 10.9% in Sullivan County, compared to 13.6% a month earlier and 3.7% a year earlier. Yet to be seen is how much of an employment boost Sullivan County might get from the Sept. 9 reopening of the Resorts World Catskills casino in the town of Thompson. The casino, a job generator for the county since it opened in February 2018, was forced to close in March because of COVID, and it sat dark for six months before being allowed to start operating again on a limited basis.
• 7.7% in Delaware County, compared to 10.3% in July 2020 and 4.5% in August 2019.
Hamilton County, in the Adirondacks — an area that has not been hit hard by COVID — had the state’s lowest unemployment rate in August, 5.5%. The highest jobless rate in the state last month was 21.1% in the Bronx. (New York City as a whole had an August unemployment rate of 16.3%.)
The statewide unemployment rate last month was 12.6%, down from a pandemic-high 16% in July but still dramatically higher than the 4.1% rate of August 2019.