Unemployment Rises in Brookhaven

November's unemployment rate in the Town of Brookhaven rose to 7.3 percent, compared to 7.1 in the prior year, the New York State Department of Labor reported Thursday.

The recent jobless rate represents a 0.3 percent change from . Accompanying that jump, the size of the town's civilian work force has also grown by about 700 since November of 2009, according to the data.

The November numbers for Brookhaven, Suffolk's largest town, reflect the overall trend in the county, which saw small increases in all municipalities and measured at 7.4 percent unemployment. The Town of Babylon had the highest rate in the county at 8 percent, while the Town of Smithtown had the lowest rate, 6.3 percent. For all of Long Island, the jobless rate in November was 7.2 percent, up from 6.9 percent last year.

"The unemployment rate did go up," said Gary Huth, Long Island Economist at the New York State Department of Labor. "It's hard to identify the cause of that. The most likely culprit is the weak hiring in retail trade, and people going in to look for those jobs and not being able to find them. Most of the other indicators look more positive."

While individual industries on Long Island varied, the total number of nonfarm jobs increased 0.5 percent over a year ago. Private-sector jobs increased by 1 percent.

"The good news is the job count stayed positive from a year ago," Huth said. "The momentum has been weaker than we'd like to see, but it's still positive."

According to state data, jobs in the wholesale trade grew 3.5 percent and education and health services rose 3 percent on Long Island, but real estate shrunk 3.8 percent and retail – typically a big component of the job market this time of year – fell 0.4 percent.

"I'm not reading this as a real solid sign that the improvement in the economy has stalled," Huth said. "It's not a terrible number, but it's weaker than we'd like to see."

Adina Genn contributed to this report.