LI unemployment rate drops to 4.1 percent

The number of employed Long Islanders jumped by 34,400 in October compared with a year earlier, the biggest year-over-year increase for the month since 1996, the state Labor Department said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Island's October unemployment rate fell to 4.1 percent, the lowest for the month since 2007. A year earlier it stood at 4.6 percent.

The Island had 1.41 million employed residents last month, compared with 1.38 million the year before. The number of unemployed residents totaled 60,900, down 5,200 from a year earlier, and an eight-year low.

The unemployment rate drop came amid Long Island's strongest job growth in two years. Business-survey data that the Labor Department released last week showed that the Island had 24,600 more jobs in October compared with a year earlier. The employment numbers include residents who are employed on the Island and elsewhere.

All told, the job market's strength bodes well for the upcoming holiday shopping season, one local economist said.

"This means that more people are in the market looking for jobs -- and finding them," said John A. Rizzo, chief economist for the Long Island Association. "The strong increase in employment is also a good sign for holiday spending."

Another economist said the big increase in the number of employed residents, juxtaposed with the much smaller decline in the number of unemployed Long Islanders, suggests that larger numbers of discouraged workers jumped back into the employment market and found jobs, said Shital Patel, labor-market analyst in the department's Hicksville office.

SEE PHOTOSSee who got hired, promoted on LI

Discouraged workers are unemployed people who stop looking for work because they don't believe they can find any. They aren't included in unemployment statistics. So large numbers of them can create the phenomenon of a declining unemployment rate even amid a deteriorating job market. And that was the case on Long Island for the first three months of this year.

But the tide turned in April, when employment began to rise, Patel said. Employment has since accelerated to last month's huge jump.

"It's basically due to people re-entering the labor force and getting jobs," she said.

Despite the good news, the job market still has room for improvement. For example, the number of unemployed Long Islanders still significantly exceeds the 48,200 in October 2006, the year before the last recession began. And the latest unemployment rate is still above the 3.2 percent in October of that year.

The statistics in the latest unemployment report are based on a household survey. The department uses year-over-year comparisons because local data aren't adjusted for seasonal fluctuations.

Among the Island's incorporated areas, North Hempstead Town's 3.6 percent jobless rate was the lowest. Freeport Village's 4.9 percent was the highest.