Local & State Headlines

Unemployment claims rise 28 percent in March

• A rise in unemployment claims in a month of typical decline reflects a slowing economy, a labor official says.

Joshua Brown

ALBANY — Albany’s initial unemployment claims are up from February to March by 28 percent, reflecting a slowing economy, according to Department of Labor statistics released this week.

Most of the 640 new claims were made in the manufacturing industry, which accounted for 36.1 percent of the new claims, said John Lawrence, assistant director for the department’s Workforce Information and Analysis Division.

Of the initial claims, 14.1 percent came from the construction industry and 13.4 percent came in retail trade, Lawrence said.

The numbers are concerning because initial unemployment claims typically decrease during this time of year, though Lawrence said they reflect a slowing economy.

“The claims should have dropped this month and they didn’t,” he said. “It’s always a concern when you lose jobs. This rate is disturbing, and we don’t know how long it will last or how much worse it might get.

“We hope for the best.”

Lawrence said unemployment claims typically spike in January for seasonal reasons — temporary workers are released, and construction work normally slows during the winter months — but the numbers decrease as summer approaches.

While the state’s initial unemployment claims only rose by 3.9 percent in March, Lawrence said increasing initial unemployment claims is a national trend.

“We are seeing this throughout the state, being that it’s in a slowing economy,” he said. “Things really started to slow down in the last quarter of 2007 and it’s worsened in the first quarter of 2008.

“This is pretty consistent with the national trend.”

The department’s data also included the state’s total number of unemployment recipients, though that information couldn’t be broken down by city, Lawrence said.

Individuals receiving unemployment across the state was up for the year by 35.6 percent to 74,294 — about 19,500 additional unemployed workers over March 2007 — according to the data. That’s a 35.6 percent increase from March 2007 until March 2008.

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