Department of Numbers

State Unemployment Updated and New Unemployment Overview

Posted Monday, August 24 2009

On Friday the BLS released the state unemployment data for July 2009. I'm going to add a sortable table where you can see all current month state unemployment data all at once, but for now the best way to navigate to the data is from the new unemployment overview page. In addition to links to each individual state, the new page also has links to each metropolitan area. I think this new layout provides a much more direct path to the unemployment data you're looking for.

Another quick note on the timeliness of the BLS unemployment data. The BLS released the state level data on Friday the 21st. National unemployment data for July was released at the beginning of the month. Metro level data has not yet been released for July (it's out September 1st). This can be a bit confusing since you don't want to compare June's metro level unemployment rate for a given city to the state's July number. Thus, when I'm making comparisons for metro areas I'm using the same month national and state data which is actually last month's data. I know, kinda confusing. But it's the way it has to be given the BLS releases this stuff in waves.