Photo by Glyn Lowe Photos.

The District, Maryland and Virginia all saw their unemployment rates drop in October, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today in its monthly tallies of state-by-state joblessness.

In D.C., unemployment dropped to 8.5 percent, down two-tenths of a percentage point from September’s survey. District-wide, employers hired 4,100 new workers, with 4,800 jobs added in the private sector.

With the latest local jobs report, D.C. has experienced the second-largest one-year decrease in unemployment in the nation, trailing only Nevada. Since October 2011, D.C.’s unemployment rate has fallen from 10.3 percent; it peaked at 10.5 percent in July 2011.

“I’m proud that our efforts to put District residents back to work continue to pay off, and that we are at our lowest level of unemployment since January of 2009,” Mayor Vince Gray said in a news release. Gray used the unemployment news as cause to promote a technology investment bill that would lower taxes on capital gains from D.C.-based tech companies to 3 percent from 8.95 percent.

Elsewhere in the area, Maryland’s unemployment rate decreased to 6.7 percent, while Virginia’s dropped to 5.7 percent. The national unemployment rate was 7.9 percent in October.