Rick Karlin reports in the Times Union that the unemployment rate in December in the Capital Region was less than half of what it was in 2020. The 2.5 percent unemployment rate that the state Department of Labor reported for the Albany-Schenectady-Troy area was 2.5 percent, much better than the 5.4 percent reported for the same period in 2020. Ithaca, at 2.2 percent, was the only metro area in New York with a lower unemployment rate last month. Columbia County posted the lowest local unemployment rate, at 2.2 percent. Read more about this story in the Times Union.