Long Island Slowly Adding Jobs

The unemployment rate in October remained at 6.1 percent in North Hempstead, according to a New York State Labor Department report released Thursday. This rate dropped .3 percent since this time last year when the local jobless rate was 6.4 percent.

As a region, Long Island's unemployment rate for October remained steady at 6.9 percent. Still that's lower than the 7.2 percent rate from a  year ago.

Meanwhile, Long Island is adding jobs, albeit at a slow pace.

"There are 10,900 more jobs on Long Island than there were in October 2009," said Gary Huth, the principal economist for the Labor Department.

"We are growing at a rate of 1.1 percent a year," he added. "It's not gangbusters, certainly, but it's significantly better than it was earlier." 

One of the strongest sectors is healthcare, and that's evident in Port Washington. 

Take the, which opened at the end of August in Port Washington. The retirement community, which also offers long-term health care needs, added 50 jobs to Port Washington, and expects to add another 30 – including registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, certified nurse's aides and personal care aides, said Margaret Minichini, Amsterdam's executive director. 

On Tuesday, the facility held an interviewing day. "Forty people showed up," Minichini said.

And within the last month, Gold Coast Chiropractic hired one chiropractic assistant, and is about to hire another, said Dr. Ronny Bergman.

Businesses, too, are hiring locally.

"We are still growing and building bench strength." said Deborah Virella, Global Head of Human Resources for The NPD Group, Inc, the research firm.

Publishers Clearing House says that with the evolving needs of its business, it can be difficult to predict the size of its workforce in advance. Still, it's looking for talent.

"With the growth of our online business, we most likely will be looking for experts in the fields of survey recruitment, email marketing, data warehouse and social media," noted Margaret Crossan, senior manager of the company's consumer affairs.  

She added that the company also has a college intern program that enables graduate and undergraduate students to pick up meaningful work experience.

Government hiring, however, is weak, Huth said, with municipalities tightening their belts.

That's the case over at the , which is not laying off workers but rather controlling hiring through attrition.