The Nebraska Department of Labor (NDOL) announced today that Nebraska’s preliminary unemployment rate for January was 3.3 percent, seasonally adjusted. The rate is the same as the December 2016 rate and up 0.1 percentage points from January 2016. December’s unemployment rate was revised down from 3.4 to 3.3 as part of the normal revision process.

“January saw normal seasonal fluctuations in employment, while the overall unemployment rate was stable,” said Commissioner of Labor John H. Albin. “Total nonfarm employment continued to exceed 1 million jobs.”

Nonfarm employment for January was 1,003,072. The private industry with the most growth over the month was other services (up 157), which includes repair and maintenance; personal and laundry services; and religious, grantmaking, civic and professional organizations. Year-over-year industry statistics are unavailable until April due to benchmarking.

The national seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for January was 4.8 percent, up 0.1 percentage points over the month and down 0.1 percentage points from the January 2016 rate of 4.9 percent. The February 2017 rate was 4.7 percent, down 0.1 percentage points from January and down 0.2 percentage points from the February 2016 rate of 4.9 percent.

February 2017 Nebraska data will be published Friday, March 24. Benchmarked 2015 and 2016 data will be published Friday, April 21. 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). It is a necessary step in ensuring the data released by the NDOL is of the highest quality.

 

 

Monthly State Unemployment Rate.pdf