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

“Nebraska’s average unemployment rate for 2015 was 2.8 percent and has been dropping since 2009,” said Commissioner of Labor John H. Albin.  “December saw another month-to-month increase in Nebraska’s labor force employment.”

Total nonfarm employment in December was 1,014,529, up by 14,499 compared to December 2014.  Private industries with the most growth year over year were education and health services (up 6,910); trade, transportation and utilities (up 3,227); and financial activities (up 2,576).  Month to month, the largest gains were seen in education and health services (up 1,479) and trade, transportation and utilities (up 306).

The seasonally-adjusted national unemployment rate for December is 5.0 percent, the same as the November 2015 rate and down 0.6 percentage points from the December 2014 rate of 5.6 percent.

Due to the start of the benchmark process, January 2016 data is scheduled for release Monday, March 14 followed by February data on Friday, March 25. The 2014 and 2015 benchmarked data will be published Friday, April 15.  Benchmarking is the annual process of aligning estimated data from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) programs with known employment numbers from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) data. It is a necessary step in ensuring the data released by the NDOL is of the highest quality.