The Daily Freeman is reporting unemployment rates in the Mid-Hudson Valley and Catskills were sharply lower last month than a year earlier, according to state Department of Labor data released December 27. Greene County had a November 2018 jobless rate of 3.7 percent, down from 5.4 percent in November 2017. Columbia County's unemployment rate last month was 2.6 percent, the lowest in the state, down from 3.5 percent in 2017. Elsewhere in the region, unemployment rates in November 2018 were: 2.9 percent in Dutchess County, down from 4.5 percent the previous year; and 3.1 percent in Ulster County, a decrease from 4.5 percent in November 2017. Read the full story in the Daily Freeman.