New York City Jobless Rate Dips to 9.9 Percent New York City's unemployment rate dropped to 9.9 percent in August, the first decline in four months, as employers shed fewer jobs than they usually do at the end of the summer, the State Labor Department reported late Thursday. The jobless rate had continued to rise through the year despite steady gains in employment, confounding economists and frustrating city officials. In August, those trends appeared to be ending: The unemployment rate declined from 10 percent in June and July, though the number of jobs - before adjustments for the usual seasonal fluctuations - actually fell. James Brown, principal economist with the Labor Department, said the return of several thousand utility workers from a lockout by Consolidated Edison in July contributed to the "better-than-average showing." Over the past 12 months, employment in the city's private sector has grown by 2.9 percent, much faster than the 1.8 percent rate for the entire state and the nation, the department said. Indeed, the city has accounted for more than 93,000 of the 132,600 private-sector jobs added in the state in the last year. State officials said New York had regained all of the jobs it lost during the recession, which officially ended in June 2009. The city has long since added back all of the jobs it lost during the recession, a fact that made the rising unemployment rate so curious. The city's 9.9 percent rate still is higher than recorded for more than two years before this summer, the state's figures show. The national unemployment rate is 8.1 percent, even though the country has gained back fewer than half of the jobs it lost since the recession began in late 2007. New Jersey's Labor Department reported earlier on Thursday that its statewide unemployment rate rose to a three-decade high of 9.9 percent in August, from 9.8 percent in July.