Unemployment rates inch up in local counties

KINGSTON, N.Y. » Unemployment rates in almost all Mid-Hudson and Catskills counties were slightly higher in June 2017 than they were a year earlier, according to data released Tuesday by the state Department of Labor.

Higher unemployment rates don’t always indicate an increase in the number of people who are out work. In a healthy job market, they often are the result of unemployed people resuming their search for work after being dropped from the unemployment rolls because of longtime inactivity.

In Ulster County, the June 2017 unemployment rate was 4.4 percent, up a tick from 4.3 percent in June 2016, the state labor department said. The jobless rate in Dutchess County rose from 4.2 percent to 4.4 percent over the same 12-month span.

Elsewhere in the region, according to the labor office, the June 2017 unemployment rates were:

• 4.6 percent in Greene County, up from 4.4 percent a year earlier.

• 3.5 percent in Columbia County, up from 3.4 percent a year earlier. (Columbia’s June 2017 jobless rate was the lowest in the state, as often in the case.)

• 4.6 percent in Orange County, up from 4.3 percent.

• 5.3 percent in Delaware County, unchanged.

• 4.4 percent in Sullivan county, up from 4.3 percent.

The statewide unemployment rate last month was 4.5 percent, down from 4.7 percent a year earlier, the labor department said.

Joblessness stood at 4.4 percent last month in both Ulster and Dutchess, the state labor department says.