The Daily Freeman is reporting unemployment rates in the Mid-Hudson Valley and Catskills were sharply lower in June 2014 than 2013, the state Department of Labor said Tues., July 22. The Columbia County jobless rate last month was 4.8 percent, compared with 6.3 percent in the same month a year earlier, the department said. In Greene County, the unemployment rate fell from 7.8 percent in June 2013 to 6.1 percent in June 2014. The jobless rate fell at similar rates throughout the region. The statewide unemployment rate last month was 6.5 percent, down from 7.8 percent in June 2013. The lowest unemployment rate in the state last month was 4.2 percent in Hamilton County, in the Adirondacks. The highest rate was 10.8 percent in the Bronx.