Region Adds 3,100 Jobs in Year

by Michelle Kearns

News Business Reporter

4/22/2006

Unemployment rate drops to 5.6% from 5.9%

The Buffalo-Niagara region's unemployment rate dropped this month to 5.6 percent - down from 5.9 last month and flat compared to 5.6 in March of 2005. Yet, the state's monthly survey showed that 3,100 new jobs had been created in the region during the past year, 2,000 of them in financial services.
Among those are the positions, slightly more than 1,000, added by the new offices of the insurer Geico in Amherst, helping to replace the factory jobs that continue to wane.

"That's good news," said John Slenker, the labor department's regional economist in Buffalo of the March numbers released this week. "We're actually growing over the year."

The region's growth rate of 0.6 percent beat out five of the state's 14 major metropolitan areas. Buffalo-Niagara tied with Albany and fell below the state average of 1 percent and the state's two strongest performers of New York City and Syracuse at 1.6 percent.

The labor department's economic glimpse taken from job numbers estimated through surveys during the week of March 12 revealed 6,000 new jobs in the local service sector, which includes finance, insurance, accounting and temporary help agencies.

"Those are areas that have shown real strength," Slenker said.

The overall the growth of 1.3 percent in services, offset a continuing drop of 2,500 in manufacturing jobs in the past year.

"This has been an ongoing trend for decades," Slenker said. "This isn't new. It's been getting more and more intense."

The region had 542,300 jobs last month, up from 539,200 in March of 2005. That is 200 fewer jobs than the 542,500 count from March of 1990. "We're basically running at the same level," said Slenker.

Buffalo-Niagara's unemployment rate continues to drop, coming in at 5.6 percent lower than the 6.1 percent of 2005 and the 6.7 percent of 2004.

The slight drop from February to March is typical of the season's change, as warmer weather allows for work in construction - up by 100 jobs - and leisure and hospitality, up by 400 jobs. In addition, retail typically recovers in March from a post-Christmas slump. It was up last month by 800 jobs.

Buffalo's unemployment rate was down to 6.3 percent from 6.5 of February and 6.5 of March of 2005. In Niagara Falls the jobless rate dropped to 7.5 percent from 7.9 in February and 7.6 of March of 2005.

Unemployment rates for other local counties for March, February and March of 2005 were:

Allegany 5.7, 6.2, 6.2

Cattaraugus 5.9, 6.2, 6.2

Chautauqua 5.1, 5.5, 5.2

Genesee 5.7, 6.4, 5.7

Orleans 6.8, 7.1, 6.6

Wyoming 6.6, 7.0, 6.4

e-mail: mkearns@buffnews.com