Capital Region jobless rate 4.8% in March

ALBANY — The Capital Region unemployment rate hit 4.8 percent in March, a drop from 5.2 percent in the previous month but a jump from 4.6 percent in March 2017.

The state Department of Labor reported the statistics Tuesday; the numbers ranked Albany-Schenectady-Troy as among the stronger metropolitan areas in the state. Two very different metros — New York City and Ithaca — tied for lowest March unemployment, at 4.2 percent.

At the county level, the three lowest unemployment rates were in boroughs of New York City: Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. The fourth-lowest was Queens’ neighbor to the east, Nassau County, and the fifth-lowest was Tompkins County, home to the city of Ithaca.

Watertown had the highest unemployment of any metro area in the state, at 8 percent. The highest county jobless rate was recorded by Hamilton County, at 12.5 percent.

Along with the number of jobs and percentage of unemployment, the monthly state report breaks out the jobs by category.

The two top sectors in the Capital Region are education/health services and government, each accounting for 21 percent of the workforce here. Trade/transportation/utilities and professional/business services were the only other sectors accounting for more than 10 percent of the workforce, at 16 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

Over the past 10 years — from March 2008 to March 2018 — the region’s education/health services workforce grew 22.8 percent, but the government workforce shrank 5.1 percent. The two other sectors with the most job growth over the past decade were leisure/hospitality (24.8 percent) and manufacturing (18.8 percent), which now account for 8 percent and 6 percent of the Capital Region workforce, respectively.

JOBLESS RATES

The following unemployment rates were reported for counties in and around the Capital Region for March 2018 and March 2017: