May's Unemployment Rate: 4.6% in Westchester

Written by LANNING TALIAFERRO (Patch Staff)

The New York State Department of Labor this week released preliminary local area unemployment rates for May 2015, and Westchester County continues to fare well.

Unemployment rate highlights:

• The counties in New York State with the lowest unemployment rates include:
  • Columbia County (3.9%)
  • Saratoga County (4.1%)
  • Tompkins County (4.1%)
  • Nassau County (4.3%)
  • Putnam County (4.3%)
  • Albany County (4.4%)
  • Rensselaer County (4.5%)
  • Ontario County (4.6%)
  • Rockland County (4.6%)
  • Suffolk County (4.6%)
  • Westchester County (4.6%)

Rates are calculated following procedures prescribed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state’s unemployment rate relies in part on the results of the Current Population Survey, which contacts approximately 3,100 households in New York State each month.

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The state’s private sector job count increased by 139,300 from May 2014 to May 2015. In May 2015, the number of private sector jobs in the state was 7,783,800, an all-time high. The state’s private sector job count is based on a payroll survey of 18,000 New York employers conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In addition, the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.7 percent in May 2015, remaining at its lowest level since August 2008.

The May 2015 unemployment rate in the Dutchess-Putnam metro area dropped to 4.6 percent from 5.1 percent.

Over the same time span, the metro Orange-Rockland-Westchester area also dropped to 4.6 percent from 5.1 percent.