Record-High Unemployment in Southampton Continues into February

The town of Southampton still has not escaped record-high unemployment — 10.2 percent for February — according to state Department of Labor data released Tuesday.

The rate went up 0.2 percentage points compared to 12 months prior, bucking the county trend. In that same time period, Suffolk County’s unemployment dropped 0.5 percent, to 8.2 percent.

“Before the recession began the employment rate in Suffolk was closer to 4 percent, so obviously we have a long way to go to get back there,” Department of Labor senior economist Michael Crowell said Tuesday.

There was a small bit of good news for Southampton, as the Department of Labor adjusted the town down by a 10th of a percentage point, to 10.2 percent. However, the figure is still the highest rate the town has seen since the department started keeping track at the local level in 1990.

“It’s taking a long time for the banks to get the faith back to start lending, and until they do that businesses have a hard time getting loans and they can’t hire people," Crowell said. "It’s sort of a vicious circle in a way.”

But there is hope on the horizone, according to Crowell. “A number of things have been coming slowly to indicate the economy is turning around,” he said. “It’s going to be another year at least before we get back to where we were before the recession.”

Crowell pointed out that the number of employed people in the county grew by 1,300 from February 2010 to February 2011, but the number of people unemployed decreased by even more — by close to 4,000. “They basically left the labor force, which means they stopped looking for work,” he explained. This could be attributed to the “major breadwinner finding a job so the other spouse doesn’t have to work anymore,” he said. It could also be explained by discouraged workers giving up on looking for work.

In Southampton Town, the labor force grew from 31,400 to 31,600 while the number of employed stayed stagnant at about 28,300 between February 2010 and February 2011. The number of unemployed grew from 3,100 to 3,200.

Historically in Southampton, the employment rate drops from February to March, as local businesses gear up for the summer. Last March, the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent

“There are a lot of seasonal factors, so to compare from month-to-month is almost not worth the effort,” Crowell said, explaining that changes from one month to the next do not indicate a trend in the job market.

Statewide, the unemployment rate fell to 8.7 percent, down from 9.5 percent year-to-year. New York is faring better than the country, which had 9.5 percent unemployment this February and 10.4 percent a year prior.

Riverhead Town also saw a slight increase in unemployment, but Smithtown and Brookhaven towns have less unemployment than the county as a whole. The Department of Labor does not break down data for Southold and East Hampton towns because the populations are too small.