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Orleans unemployment rate has steadily risen since October

By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 2 April 2021 at 3:22 pm

Photo by Tom Rivers: An Albion business has an open sign projecting out on Main Street.

Orleans County unemployment rate has been steadily rising in recent months, going from 5.4 percent in October to 7.5 percent in February, according to data from NYS Department of Labor.

The 7.5 percent is less than half of the unemployment rate during the pandemic high of 16.8 percent in April.

Here are the county’s unemployment rate for 12 months:

  • February 2021: 7.5%
  • January 2021: 7.3%
  • December 2020: 6.6%
  • November 2020: 5.7%
  • October 2020: 5.4%
  • September 2020: 5.6%
  • August 2020: 8.9%
  • July 2020: 11.5%
  • June 2020: 10.8%
  • May 2020: 12.3%
  • April 2020: 16.8%
  • March 2020: 5.6%

Source: NYS Department of Labor

The county’s 7.5 percent unemployment rate in February compares to 5.6 percent a year before. In Orleans County, the number of people working is down by 400, from 16,400 in February 2020 to 16,000 in February 2021. The number on unemployment is up 300 from 1,000 to 1,300 during that time.

In NYS, the number of people working is down 805,600 from 9,130,000 in February 2020 to 8,324,400, with the unemployment rate up from 4.1 percent in February 2020 to 9.6 percent in February 2021.

Nationally the number of people working is down nearly 8.5 million with the unemployment rate up from 3.8 percent in February last year to 6.6 percent in February 2021.

The number of people working declined 21,100 in Buffalo-Niagara Falls metro from 510,400 to 489,400 during the 12 months. In the Rochester metro, the number is down 10,500, from 493,300 to 482,800 during that time period.

New York City is suffering the most with unemployment. The rate was 13.2 percent in February, with the number of people working dropping by 584,300 — from 3,963,800 in February 2020 to 3,379,500 in February 2021.

Locally, Orleans is slightly higher than most other nearby counties’ unemployment rates. Here are some of the unemployment rates of nearby counties for February: Livingston, 6.4 percent; Genesee, 6.6 percent; Monroe, 7.3 percent; Wyoming, 7.4 percent; Orleans, 7.5 percent; Erie, 7.9 percent; and Niagara, 8.3 percent.