Region sees net gain of 2,700 jobs over past year

PHOTOGRAPHER: Bethany Bump

The Capital Region added 4,400 private-sector jobs in the 12 months leading up to September, according to state Department of Labor statistics released today.

The employment picture is less impressive when factoring in losses in the public sector, for an overall net gain in the area of 2,700 jobs.

The state added an overall 135,200 jobs during the same time period, but reached an all-time high job count of 7,337,000 with the addition of 2,900 private-sector jobs in the month of September. New York is one of only five states in the country that has regained all of the private-sector jobs it lost in the recession, according to the Department of Labor.

“September 2012 was a good month for our state’s economy,” Bohdan Wynnyk, the Labor Department’s deputy director of research and statistics, said in a news release issued Thursday.

Including the public sector, New York added 9,600 jobs last month. The professional and business services sector added the most jobs over a one-year period ending in September, primarily focused in professional, scientific and technical services.

In addition, 23,200 more New Yorkers were employed last month, bringing the state’s unemployment rate down by 0.2 percentage points from 9.1 percent in August to 8.9 percent in September. A total of 848,000 New York residents were unemployed last month.

The U.S. gained a net 114,000 jobs in September. The nationwide unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent in August.