New York's unemployment rate dipped below 4% for the first time since early 2020, the state Department of Labor on Thursday announced. 

The state's jobless picture has slowly improved in the three years since the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when unemployment reached historic levels. 

Labor officials on Thursday reported the state's unemployment rate dropped from 4% in April to 3.9% in May. The state added 31,000 private-sector jobs in May, bringing the total to 8.2 million. 

New York added jobs at a slightly faster clip than the rest of the country, with a 0.4% increase in May; the U.S. economy's overall job count grew by 0.2% last month. 

Still, New York has struggled to gain all of the jobs lost during the initial months of the pandemic, when more than 1 in 5 New Yorkers were unemployed. 

And labor force participation has also slowly climbed back, increasing from 60.8% in April to 61% in May.