Long Island's October jobless rate fell to 3.1 percent, a 17-year low 

Long Island's unemployment rate fell to 3.1 percent in October, the lowest rate here since 2001, state data released Tuesday show.

A year earlier the rate stood at 4.2 percent. 

The local jobless rate has fallen from a peak of 8.2 percent, reached in 2010 and 2012, following the steep recession from December 2007 through June 2009.

The number of employed residents rose by 40,600 between October 2017 and last month to 1.463 million, a record, the Labor Department said. The number of unemployed Long Islanders fell by 15,400 to 46,800, the lowest for the month since 2000. 

"Overall, the report was great news for the region," said Shital Patel, labor-market analyst in the department's Hicksville office.

Still, she warned that local companies may have growing difficulty finding workers to fill openings, as the shrinking labor pool here could be exacerbated by demographic trends.

"The region's slow population growth combined with a larger portion of the workforce at or nearing retirement age is a cause for concern for a labor market near full employment," she said.

One in four workers on Long Island was 55 years of age and over in 2017, said Patel, quoting census data.

David Vitt, assistant professor in the department of economics at Farmingdale State College, described the 1.1 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate as "large."

"You don't see that in data very frequently," he said. "Year over year, it is typically less than a percentage point." The report on the local unemployment rate comes after state Labor Department data last week showed modest year-over-year job growth for October. The Island had 12,200 more jobs last month than in October 2017. That was virtually unchanged from September, when the Island was growing at an annual rate of 12,300 jobs. But September's data was revised significantly from the 10,000-job-increase the department first reported. The job numbers are based on a survey of Long Island businesses.

The unemployment rate is based on a census survey of Long  Island residents, regardless of where they work.

The department uses year-over-year comparisons because local data aren't adjusted for seasonal swings in employment. 

Four local municipalities tied for the lowest jobless rate- 2.9 percent, in the towns of North Hempstead, Oyster Bay and Smithtown and the City of Long Beach. Freeport Village's 3.8 percent was the highest.  

Among the state's metro areas, Long Island tied for the the second-lowest jobless rate with Albany-Schenectady-Troy and Dutchess-Putnam. Ithaca, the home of Cornell University, had the lowest rate - 3 percent.

New York City's rate was 3.9 percent, on the same seasonally unadjusted basis.

Those rate rates compared with 3.6 percent for the state and 3.5 percent for the nation. 

Even in a near full-employment economy layoffs continue. Equifax Inc., one of the country's major credit reporting companies, and Broadcom Inc., a  San Jose, California, company that closed on its purchase of CA earlier this month, filed state notices this month that they plan to lay off Long Island workers.

Under New York’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, companies with at least 50 full-time employees must file a 90-day notice of a mass layoff or closing.