New York State Unemployment Rates

     The map I created using Google Fusion Tables is an interactive map and table outlining both the recently released unemployment rates for February 2012 for each county in New York State as well as the change in the unemployment rates for each county from February 2011 to February 2012. The gradient I used to display the map is the change in percentage ranging from the dark green, which is a gaining in employment with the highest being 0.4% gain, and dark blue, which is a loss in employment with the highest being 0.6%. I made my own table using data from a table online from the New York State Department of Labor.

     There are clearly patterns present in the map when it comes to region and the change in unemployment or the unemployment rate. The most rural, northern counties have the highest unemployment rates in New York State with the exception of Bronx County which has the highest rate in the state. This could be due to the cutbacks from New York State and from the Federal Government during the financial crises of the last few years, and the government is the largest employer in most of these counties. The Bronx is always an outlier when it comes to the city and the rest of southern New York though; it always tends to be a poorer area with many disadvantaged minorities and rampant urban poverty. On the hand of the change in unemployment, these statistics are scattered county to county, but the rate of change is within one percent for the entire state with the best change being a .4% gain in employment in a couple counties as well as a 0.6% loss in employment in a couple other counties. The worst is Schoharie County which has an unemployment rate of 9.8% with a loss of .6% unemployment between February 2011 and 2012. Another reason that rural northern counties may be disproportionally represented is because the figures do not take into account seasonal work which is significant in the Adirondacks for hikers in the summer and Olympic and other winter sports tourists. When just looking at the unemployment rate for February 2012, the northern counties are the highest in the state more than likely because of a lack of real infrastructure and stable employment centers like the more stables ones, which can clearly be seen on the map of change including: Plattsburgh, Binghamton, Albany, Troy, Ithaca and Oswego. Something that all of these places have in common is that they are all home to colleges.

     A likely reason for the continued decline of the number of employed people in most of the state could be that many parts of the state that were hit the hardest by the recession, like Long Island, the City, the Capital and Western New York are still feeling the effects of the economic downturn, unlike places like the North Country or the Southern Tier which were not as harshly affected because they were not as built up and invested as the other regions so they had less to lose and more, no matter how little in comparison, to gain. An example is the retail sales that were made in St. Lawrence County, a place barely affected by the recession other than the cutting of budgets in government and schools, compared to most of the rest of the state. The revenue from the 1.2 million sales made in 2010 did not result in as large a return as it would have in the rest of the state because of the such low taxes (lowest in the state) in St. Lawrence County, a common thing among North Country counties where government is not as trusted so people are not polite at all when it comes to raising taxes. The county with the highest tax rate north of Syracuse is Herkimer at 8.25%. Even though the counties in Upstate New York have had more positive changes over all than those downstate, the ratio between Upstate and Downstate when it comes to the unemployment rate is still in favor of Downstate, something that the creation of the Regional Economic Development Councils can hopefully rectify.