ALBANY — Unemployment fell and private-sector jobs grew to an all-time high in New York last month.
The state hit 7.4 million private-sector jobs in March with a 14,100-job gain over February, the state Labor Department reported yesterday.
That helped drop the unemployment rate to 8.2 percent from 8.4 percent the month before, with the city’s rate declining to 8.9 percent from 9.1 percent.
Both were still well above the national rate of 7.6 percent for March.
And the state’s 1.3 percent rate of job growth over the past year lagged the nation’s 1.9 percent increase.
The education, health, professional and business-services sectors posted the biggest gains in New York, followed by the leisure and hospitality, trade, transportation, utilities and construction sectors.
The government, manufacturing, finance, natural-resources and mining sectors all lost jobs.
Long Island was a hot spot, posting a 2.1 percent gain, while jobs grew in the northern suburbs by just 0.5 percent.
The upstate Binghamton and Elmira regions — home to the natural-gas-rich Marcellus shale — were the only metro areas besides Utica-Rome to lose jobs in the past year as Gov. Cuomo continues to delay a decision on the controversial gas- drilling practice of hydrofracking.