The unemployment rate across the Buffalo Niagara region jumped to 4.7% in January – its highest level since the summer of 2021 – as a wave of seasonal job losses left fewer workers holding jobs.
The region’s jobless rate increased from 4.4% in December and was higher than the 4.3% rate in January of last year, the state Labor Department reported Tuesday.
Instead of a job market that was stagnant for most of 2023, the new data paints a picture of one that was improving slowly and steadily throughout the year, Robinson writes.
The higher unemployment rate came despite a separate report last week that showed that hiring across the region was stronger than initially reported, and that job growth during 2023 ran at a solid 2% annual pace.
But a solid job market, where workers feel like they have a good chance of finding a job, also tends to bring more people into the local labor pool, and that is what happened over the past year, with more than 5,000 workers beginning their job hunt.
The new data, however, indicates that not all of them were successful in finding a job. The number of people holding a job grew by slightly fewer than 2,000 people over the past year, an indication that businesses may be cutting back on adding workers, or that the new…
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