Job market on pace for annual gains

Westchester County is on pace to see its first annual employment gain since 2007 as the unemployment rate was unchanged from October to November at 6.2 percent.

The local job market continued to outperform the state as a whole. In November, the state”™s unemployment rate ticked up to 8 percent from 7.9 percent in October, with the state Department of Labor attributing the rise to an increase in the statewide labor force by 10,000 people.

In Westchester, the total number of employed residents dropped slightly from October while increasing by 3,200 from November 2010, when the unemployment rate was 7.1 percent; however the data were not adjusted to account for seasonal factors.

Labor department analyst John Nelson said the local job market has been a model of consistency over the past several months, with steady increases putting both Westchester and the Hudson Valley on pace for the first annual increase in employment since 2007.

“In the lower Hudson Valley, counties have been averaging, through November, about a 1.1 projected over-the-year growth rate, so they”™re on pace for a nice annual increase,” Nelson said.

The November employment report for the three-county region of Westchester, Rockland and Putnam highlighted annual employment gains in retail, health care, private education, financial services and hospitality.

Holding back progress on the employment front were the construction, manufacturing, professional services and government sectors.

Going into 2012, Nelson said a number of developments in the health care, retail and technology fields ”“ plus the anticipated start of construction on a new Tappan Zee Bridge ”“ would further boost the job market.

“You have a lot of good projects that are in the pipeline that could be very promising to the regional job market and to the region”™s overall economy,” Nelson said, pointing to companies such as Accorda Therapeutics Inc., IBM Corp., Linuo Solar Group Co. and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, among others, that have all announced plans to hire, expand or construct facilities in the lower Hudson Valley in the coming year.

The education and health services sector, which is the three-county region”™s biggest employer, added 5,500 jobs over the past year for gains of 4.7 percent, while the leisure and hospitality sector expanded employment by 2.7 percent and the financial activities sector expanded by 3.4 percent.

Also of note, the retail trade sector added some 1,600 jobs over the past year for gains of 2.4 percent.

On a negative note, the natural resources, mining and construction sector and the manufacturing sector both cut employment by 2.7 percent over the past year, while professional and business services employment declined by 2 percent and government employment by 0.6 percent.