NY State Posts Job Gains While Unemployment Remains At 3.9%

WAMC Northeast Public Radio | By Dave Lucas

Published May 16, 2019 at 3:46 PM EDT

Preliminary jobs numbers released by the state Department of Labor on Thursday show there were more than 8.3 million private-sector jobs in New York, an increase of 24,600 or 0.3% compared to the previous month.

It's the highest number of private-sector jobs in the state since current record keeping began in the 1970s.

New York state's unemployment rate remained unchanged at 3.9% in April, slightly behind the national rate of 3.6%.

The numbers come from federal surveys of 18,000 employers in the state.

Jobs in health care and private educational services experienced the biggest job gains in the past year.

Kingston saw the largest jobs gains of any state metropolitan area in April with a 2.9% increase.

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Dave Lucas

Dave Lucas is WAMC’s Capital Region Bureau Chief. Born and raised in Albany, he’s been involved in nearly every aspect of local radio since 1981. Before joining WAMC, Dave was a reporter and anchor at WGY in Schenectady. Prior to that he hosted talk shows on WYJB and WROW, including the 1999 series of overnight radio broadcasts tracking the JonBenet Ramsey murder case with a cast of callers and characters from all over the world via the internet. In 2012, Dave received a Communicator Award of Distinction for his WAMC news story "Fail: The NYS Flood Panel," which explores whether the damage from Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee could have been prevented or at least curbed. Dave began his radio career as a “morning personality” at WABY in Albany.

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