Nebraska’s preliminary unemployment rate for March was 3.0 percent, seasonally adjusted. The jobless rate is the same as the February rate and up 0.2 percentage points from the March 2015 rate of 2.8 percent.

“Employment in a number of industries grew both over the month and over the year,” said Commissioner of Labor John H. Albin.  “Employment in education and health services reached a new high in March.”

Private industries with the most growth year over year were education and health services (up 4,376), professional and business services (up 3,783) and leisure and hospitality (up 3,214).  Month to month, the largest gains were seen in trade, transportation and utilities (up 2,057), professional and business services (up 1,612), and mining and construction (up 1,925).

The seasonally-adjusted national unemployment rate in March was 5.0 percent, up 0.1 percentage points from the February rate and down .5 percentage points from the March 2015 rate of 5.5 percent.

April 2016 data will be published Friday, May 20. 

With this release Nebraska has completed the 2015 benchmarking process.  Benchmarking is the annual process of updating previous estimates to incorporate revised employment data, population data and unemployment data.  The state and substate data are then re-estimated to incorporate these changes into the labor force and workforce estimates.