Riverhead's Unemployed Up Half a Percent from Last Year

November employment rates for Riverhead jumped up to 7.7 percent, a half percentage point compared to last year. According to the New York State Department of Labor, the town's highest unemployment rate since March is also up a whole percent compared to last month, putting about 180 more Riverhead workers on the unemployment rolls.

Riverhead's unemployment rate also rose at this time a year ago, though not as sharply: October 2009 had an unemployment rate of 6.9 percent, compared to 6.7 percent last month; the unemployment rate for November 2009 stood at 7.2 percent.

Gary Huth, a labor market analyst for the New York State Department of Labor, said that one factor that may have increased Riverhead's unemployment was "weaker retail numbers than were expected. A lot of people look for retail work this time of year and we had been hearing that employers were going to be hiring, but it seems it has not worked out that way. Riverhead does have a lot of retail jobs, so that would affect the town's work force."

Suffolk County's November unemployment rate rose to 7.4 percent from October's 7 percent; New York State went from 8 percent to 8.2 percent. Riverhead, the county and state fared far better than the U.S. as a whole, with the November countrywide unemployment rate at 9.8 percent.

Statistics for the past two years seem to belie the opinion of some "experts" that the recession is over. For Riverhead, the month with the lowest unemployment rate in 2010 and 2009 was April 2009, at 6.3 percent.