Unemployment climbed to 4.5 percent in the 12 months ended in January, compared to 3.8 percent in December and 4.1 percent in January, 2007.

The latest numbers moved the economy a lot farther away from full employment, which is a jobless rate below four percent.

Hempstead Village’s seven percent jobless rate was the highest on the Island. Rockville Centre had the lowest at 3.6 percent.

“The unemployment rate confirms that something is happening in the job market,” said Pearl Kamer, chief economist at the Long Island Association, and she said it wasn’t positive.

Local economists had been keeping an eye on the jobs market here because the January federal jobs report showed the first private-sector jobs loss in more than four years and set off fresh worries about a recession.

But the Island added 11,800 jobs for a 1.1 percent increase in the 12 months ended in January, a big jump from the 4,400 jobs in the 12 months ended in December. “Actually it’s quite good,” Kamer said.

Gary Huth, the state Labor Department’s principal economist for Long Island, agreed: “We’re being cautious, but the numbers that came in were stronger than we expected.”

In fact, the department revised its annual average for all of 2007 to 11,600 from the previous 8,100.

The biggest jobs gainer was the educational and health-services sector, which frequently takes the lead. It added 5,600 net new jobs. The leisure and hospitality sector, usually more than three rungs down on the list of the biggest gainers, leaped to second place with, 3,900 jobs.

Two things have contributed to the boost in tourism, Kamer said: The weak dollar, which has prompted more people to travel locally, and Long Island’s appeal as a year-round tourist destination.

In New York City, the leisure and hospitality sector also posted the most jobs — 12,300. Overall, the City added 50,800 jobs in the 12 months ended in January, or a 1.6 increase.

Jobs numbers on Long Island largely declined in 2007 and some indicators suggests that cycle could repeat itself or even worsen. For example, information technology, which had been a red-hot sector may have cooled.

Robert Messana, the managing director of Spherion Professional Services in Westbury, said that beginning in the fourth quarter, companies have been hiring fewer permanent IT workers and more temporary ones. “What we are experiencing now is the downslope of the permanent hiring cycle,” he said.

The staffing industry is considered a bellwether of the jobs market.

Kamer said how the jobs market performs in the next year will depend on consumer spending, which makes up 70 percent of the economy. That could be severely dampened by higher energy prices and credit that is harder to come by.

“Without consumer spending we could very well be in for a recession,” she said.
Long Island’s unemployment rate jumped in the past year, but the local economy continued to add jobs, according to the latest data from the State Labor Department.