The full set of revisions to state employment and unemployment data, along with new information for January 2025, will be released next week. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has issued revised data for the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS). This years LAUS revisions were more extensive than normal, with data revised back to the beginning of the series in 1976. In this article, we will focus on the more recent history revealed by the revised data.
The figures below compare the pre-revision time series to the newly revised data for total household employment and unemployment. As is typical, the revisions tend to smooth out some of the fluctuations in the originally published data.
The originally published data for the number of employed showed two brief periods of contraction, in 2022 and 2023. The revised data show positive monthly increases for the entire period from May 2020 through December 2024. The revised series ends up slightly lower than the original estimates, but by only 1,850 individuals (0.14%).
The number of unemployed individuals was revised lower for the second half of 2023, then somewhat higher during the second half of 2024. As a result, the new path of unemployment shows a slow, but relatively steady increase in the number of unemployed over the past two years. As of December 2024, the number of unemployed was revised higher by approximately 2,740 individuals.
The impact on the unemployment rate was a smoother profile path, attenuating some of the extreme changes. The record-low unemployment rate of 2.8% in early 2023 has been revised up to 2.9%; the transitory peak in late 2023 was lowered from 3.7% to 3.5%; and the new end-of year unemployment rate was revised up from 3.4% to 3.6%.
The revisions also affected the calculated estimates for the state’s labor force participation rate. The new data show a more sustained rate of increase over the past two years, culminating in a rate of 58.3% in December 2024—slightly higher than the $58.2% originally reported.
