Riverhead's Jobless Rate Falls in April, Though County, State Fall Faster

While workers in Suffolk County and New York State are seeing their lowest unemployment rates in two years, the jobless rate in Riverhead remains higher than 2009, though it declined over last year.

Seven percent of Riverhead's workforce was reported unemployed last month, compared to 7.3 percent in 2010 and 6.5 percent in 2009, according to numbers released from the state Department of Labor.

"The pattern is pretty much the same in the local towns as it is in the region, which is on Long Island as a whole," said Michael Crowell, a labor market analyst with the New York Department of Labor. "We had a year where the unemployment rate hasn't risen. So that's a positive development in the economy."

The actual number of employed workers in Riverhead dropped slightly to just over 15,800.

Similar trends played out on higher levels.

Suffolk County and New York State reported jobless rates of 6.9 percent and 7.7 percent, respectively - both the lowest figures for each since April of 2009.

However, over 130,000 fewer people in New York State were employed in April 2011 than in April 2009. In Suffolk County, the number of people holding jobs in the past two years has dropped by more than 10,000.

"That's a funny thing, because the number of unemployed is going down, and the number of employed are also going down," Crowell said. "The labor force as a whole is shrinking. One of the prime causes of that is often discouraged workers ... and for the region as a whole, we're still down 50,000 jobs over a peak about four years ago."

Crowell pointed out that Long Island's unemployment rate in April of 6.6 percent was double than its April 2007 level. Riverhead's unemployment rate in 2007 was 3.4 percent, less than half of last month's rate.