July employment up slightly in Hudson Valley private sector

Private-sector employers in the seven-county Hudson Valley region showed a net gain of 5,400 jobs through July over a one-year period, an increase of less than 1 percent, the state Department of Labor reported.

The 0.7 percent increase in July in year-to-year private-sector employment in the region topped a state job growth rate of 0.2 percent for the month, when private employers added 17,300 jobs statewide compared with July last year.

The Putnam-Rockland-Westchester labor market netted 1,400 additional jobs in July from a year ago, a 0.3 percent increase, according to the Labor Department”™s research and statistics division.

Johny Nelson, the Labor Department”™s regional labor market analyst in White Plains, said educational and health services was the fastest-growing employment supersector in the region from July 2013 through this July, growing by 2.6 percent. That sector last month employed 188,100 workers throughout the Hudson Valley, an increase of 4,700 jobs from a year ago.

Most of that growth came in the Putnam-Rockland-Westchester area, where 3,200 additional  education and health services employees worked last month compared with July last year, according to the Labor Department. Nelson noted that 2,600 of those jobs, about 81 percent, are in health care and social assistance.

Employment in the construction industry, which the state tracks in tandem with jobs in mining and natural resources, rebounded in July in the Hudson Valley, adding 2,100 jobs from June, a 5 percent increase. Construction employment numbers had dropped 3.4 percent in the first half of this year.  The July recovery reduced the sector”™s loss over a one-year period to 100 jobs, a 0.2 percent decline.

Nelson noted the construction sector”™s improvement last month was spurred by hiring in the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown labor market, where the sector gained 600 jobs compared with July 2013, a 6 percent increase. It was the largest year-over-year increase for July since 2005, he said.

The region’s largest job losses in July compared with a year ago were in financial activities, which shed 1,000 jobs; manufacturing, which lost 700 jobs; and information, which had 500 fewer jobs.

The state has had 20 consecutive months of job growth in the private sector, “the longest streak since at least 1990, as far as records go back,” said Bohdan M. Wynnyk, deputy director of the Labor Department research and statistics division, in a press release.