LINCOLN- The Nebraska Department of Labor (NDOL) announced today that Nebraska’s preliminary unemployment rate for January 2015 is 2.9 percent, seasonally adjusted. The jobless rate is down 0.2 percentage points from the December rate of 3.1 percent and down 0.5 percentage points from the January 2014 rate of 3.4 percent.

 

“Both the employment and unemployment numbers show improvement over last year,” said Commissioner of Labor John H. Albin.  “Nebraska’s unemployment rate remains one of the lowest in the country.”

 

Total nonfarm employment for January was 982,468, up by 11,601 over January of 2014. Private industries with the most growth year over year were education and health services (up 4,822), other services (up 1,935), and professional and business services (up 1,368). Month to month, the most growth was seen in other services (up 799), and information (up 35).

 

The seasonally-adjusted national unemployment rate in January was 5.7 percent, up 0.1 percentage points from the December rate.

 

Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) has gone through a redesign, a process that occurs every 10 years.  These redesigns improve accuracy and introduce updates to new areas announced by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  The new inputs and changes in methodology will impact many of the substate areas and some of the revisions to employment for some of these areas may be very large; therefore, all pre-benchmarked (December 2014 and prior) LAUS estimates are not comparable to the new 2015 estimates.  All benchmarked data is scheduled for release on April 21. 

 

February 2015 data will be published Friday, March 27