NYC METRO | Lowest Jobless on Long Island, Less Than 5%

Long Island has the lowest May unemployment rate of metro
divisions in the NYC metro area. Long Island is Nassau
 + Suffolk counties. This is not a BLS map - for BLS
definitions of metro areas, see www.bls.gov release.

The Long Island metro division, which combines Nassau and Suffolk Counties, again has a lower unemployment rate than the other metro divisions within the NYC metro area.

This is according to unemployment numbers for May just released by the BLS.

The Long Island economy will be closely watched during the next three months because of strong challenges in the Long Island Congressional elections in November.

For the entire metro NYC area, the May unemployment rate is 6.7 percent, which is higher than New York State's 6.4 percent. However, relative to May 2013, the NYC metro area improved by 1.2 percentage points, faster than NY State's 0.9 percentage-point improvement.

(The numbers are not seasonally adjusted. To calculate changes, the May figures must be compared with the same month one year earlier to minimize seasonal effects.)

Within the NYC metro area, Long Island was a star on the unemployment front. It not only had the lowest unemployment rate of the four metro divisions within the NYC metro area, it was the only one with May unemployment below 6 percent, coming in at 4.9 percent. In April, Long Island was also a full percentage point below the other metro divisions within the NYC metro area.

However, relative to a year earlier, the two Northern New Jersey metro divisions saw their unemployment rates fall faster (by 1.6 percentage points) than Long Island (1.2 percentage points) or the NYC metro division (1.1 percentage points).