Long Island job market stalls in October

The Long Island job market essentially stalled in October, data released Thursday by the state Labor Department show.

The Island had 17,800 more jobs last month, compared with a year earlier, slightly higher than the 17,200 year-over-year increase in September.

The trade, transportation and utilities sector, which includes retail, led employment gains, with 7,400 more jobs. Retail's 3,100-job increase year over year accounted for a large share of those gains.

But on a month-to-month basis, retail added just 1,000 jobs in October compared with September, a period when the sector would typically gain 1,700 jobs, the Labor Department said.

"That points to a possibility of a slow holiday season," said John A. Rizzo, chief economist of the Long Island Association. "That is cause for some concern."

That hiring could pick up in the final two months of the year, said Shital Patel, labor-market analyst in the department's Hicksville office.

"Most of the hiring occurs in November and December," she said. "October is just the start."

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The biggest employment decline occurred in financial activities, the Island's highest-paying sector, which had 2,200 fewer jobs. That category includes banking, insurance and real estate.

"The financial services industry has not yet recovered fully from the impact of the Great Recession," Patel said, "and banks are forced to cut costs by consolidating operations, including reducing head count in places such as Long Island."

The government sector, also noted for higher-paying jobs, continued to shrink. It had 2,000 fewer jobs last month, compared with a year earlier, primarily because of layoffs at local public schools.

All told, Long Island had 1.31 million jobs in October, up from 1.29 million the year before. The Labor Department uses year-over-year comparisons because local data aren't adjusted to reflect seasonal swings in employment.

Steady growth in certain categories, such as legal, has provided some Long Islanders with coveted job mobility.

In September, attorney Jason J. Smith, 41, joined Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone, a 52-lawyer firm in Mineola, after two years at a Manhattan firm with 600 lawyers.

He wasn't job hunting when a recruiter called about the Meltzer Lippe position as a partner in the firm's trusts and estates group. The Huntington resident and Yale Law School graduate said the firm's "booming" cradle-to-grave tax planning business -- and a shorter commute -- were a draw.

"If you're an established, successful attorney, you have a lot of options," Smith said. "There was just a fantastic opportunity here at Meltzer Lippe."

The department will publish the Island's October unemployment rate on Tuesday. In September the jobless rate slid to 4.8 percent from 5.9 percent a year earlier.