Genesee County workers have something to be thankful for this season.
The unemployment rate — and the number of county residents without jobs — are both down, thanks in part, perhaps, to robust job creation in the Buffalo and Rochester regions.
Genesee County’s unemployment rate fell from 4.6 percent to 4.2 percent from October 2014 to October 2015, according to the New York State Department of Labor.
The Labor Department said there were 29,000 people with jobs in Genesee County, an increase of .2 percent from the 28,800 reported in 2014.
A total of 1,300 county residents are without jobs. That represents a decrease of .1 percent, or 100 people, between October 2014 and this year, the Labor Department said.
Jobless numbers were reported down in every county statewide. Unemployment in the Buffalo-Niagara region was 4.8 percent (down from 5.4 percent in October 2014), while the five-county Rochester region rate was 4.5 percent (down from 5.1 percent).
Unemployment rate figures are not seasonally adjusted, the Labor Department cautioned, meaning they do not reflect hiring related to holidays or the weather. Year-to-year comparisons are considered valid.
Between September and October 2015, the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased from 5.1 percent to 4.8 percent, its lowest level since 2007.
Meanwhile, the Labor Department on Tuesday said the state’s private sector job count increased by 168,600 from October 2014 to October 2015. The number of private sector jobs in New York state was a record 7,859,000.
The Buffalo-Niagara Falls and Rochester metro areas were among the top five in the state for private sector job growth.
Rochester added 8,400 private sector jobs between October 2015 and October 2014, an increase of 1.9 percent. Buffalo-Niagara falls added 8,700, an increase of 1.8 percent.
At the same time, Genesee County lost 200 private sector and government jobs, according to the Labor Department. That represents a decrease of .9 percent.
New York’s strengthening economy reflects the national outlook. U.S. economic growth during the third quarter was revised up to 2.1 percent, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The U.S. Commerce Department had previously reported a rate of 1.5 percent, the Times said.
The news pleased economists:
For all of 2015, the rate of economic growth is expected to be about 2.5 percent, not much different from the 2.4 percent rate in 2014.
The tepid pace prompted Jan Hatzius, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, to call this the “tortoise recovery” in a recent note to clients. But that sobriquet does not mean the economy has been uniformly lackluster.
“While this expansion may go uncelebrated, growth in fact has been good enough to achieve a great deal of cumulative progress in the labor market,” he added. “We now expect that the U.S. economy will reach full employment within the next 12 months — the ‘tortoise recovery’ looks to be approaching the finishing line.”
