State unemployment declines to lowest rate since 2007

ALBANY, N.Y. >> The state unemployment rate dropped to 4.4 percent in February, its lowest since 2007, according to the state Department of Labor.

The statewide unemployment rate decreased from 4.6 percent in January to 4.4 percent, the lowest since April 2007.

Pushing the statewide drop was a steep decline in New York City’s unemployment rate, which declined from 4.5 to 4.3 percent, its lowest level since at least 1976.

Outside of New York City, the unemployment rate was unchanged from January at 4.5 percent, but down 0.1 percentage points from February 2016.

Statewide, the number of unemployed New Yorkers decreased from 435,700 in January to 424,100. The state economy added 12,300 jobs over the same period, reaching an all-time high job count of 8,045,400.

“The state’s labor market continued to expand in February 2017. Private sector employers in the state added 12,300 jobs, while our statewide unemployment rate decreased from 4.6 to 4.4 percent in February, which reflects the continued growth of the state’s economy,” Bohdan Wynnyk, deputy director of the state Department of Labor’s Division of Research and Statistics, said in a news release.

The Albany-Schenectady-Troy area saw an increase of 1.6 percentage points in its job count, or 7,200 nonfarm jobs, year over year, with a similar, 1.6-percentage-point increase of 5,800 jobs in the private sector.

Since the end of the Great Recession in late 2009, the state has added more than 1 million private sector jobs, with the majority of those new jobs added in education and health services, as well as professional and business services.

The only sector seeing job losses was manufacturing, which totaled 12,000 fewer positions than in February 2016.

Year- over- year sector losses were concentrated in durable goods, especially computers and electronic products and machinery manufacturing.