Riverhead Jobless Rate Stays on Par With 2010

With a jobless rate of 9.3 percent in February, the Town of Riverhead stayed on par with February of last year, according to statistics released on Tuesday by the state’s Department of Labor

The most recent numbers show 1,600 workers unemployed in Riverhead out of a total workforce of 15,700.

The recent numbers, however, showed some improvement month to month over January’s unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, which was the highest it had been in more than a decade.

Countywide, unemployment fell to 8.2 percent in February, down from 8.7 percent in February 2010. Statewide, the rate fell to 8.7 percent, down from 9.5 percent.

According to Michael Crowell, a senior economist at the labor department, New York is faring better than the country, which had 9.5 percent unemployment this February and 10.4 percent a year prior.

Commenting on the county’s lower jobless figures, he said, “It’a pretty healthy decline. The bad news is it’s just the first month, so it’s too early to see a trend there.

“Obviously you’d rather have it go down half a percentage point than up,” he said. “But 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.”

He noted that Suffolk County is faring better than upstate New York because it is more densely populated and residents are more educated – meaning more opportunities for work.

He said that the county’s leisure and hospitality industry, including restaurants and hotels, has been adding jobs since September of 2009, but remains a low-paying sector, with an average wage of $21,500.