BATON ROUGE – Not seasonally adjusted data released last week by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) shows that the number of not seasonally adjusted employed individuals increased by 14,930 to 2,009,360 from September 2018.
The number of not seasonally adjusted unemployed individuals decreased by 6,117 to 98,627 over that same time frame.
From September 2018, the not seasonally adjusted civilian labor force, or the number of people who are employed in addition to those looking for work increased by 8,813 to 2,107,987.
The not seasonally adjusted unemployment rate decreased by 0.3 percentage points to 4.7 percent from September.
From September 2018, all nine metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) saw a decline in their not seasonally adjusted unemployment rates.
The Shreveport MSA unemployment was 5.1 percent, down from 5.3 percent in September, but up from 4.7 percent from October 2017.
Jobs and employment trends data are often difficult to understand because there are two different ways to look at the data, seasonally or non-seasonally adjusted data.
Seasonal adjustment works to measure and remove the influences of predictable seasonal patterns to reveal how employment and unemployment figures change from month to month. Not seasonally adjusted data retains seasonal employment trends.
