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Method

How the jobs figures are made

How the pages of the Jobs and unemployment hub read what their publishers put out, and what that record can and cannot say. The method every topic shares — where a figure comes from, snapshots, freshness and corrections — is on the site’s methodology page.

What LAUS is

Every figure on these pages is from BLS’s Local Area Unemployment Statistics, its county file, monthly and as annual averages. BLS publishes four measures for each county, each its own series: the unemployment rate (measure 03), the unemployed (04), the employed (05) and the labor force (06). These are model-based estimates of people by where they live, not a count of jobs. BLS estimates each county’s resident labor force from surveys and administrative records; where people work, and in what industry, is another program’s question.

The denominators

The unemployment rate is BLS’s own figure, the unemployed as a share of the labor force, published to one decimal place. It is printed as BLS publishes it and never recomputed here from the unemployed and the labor force. No per-resident or participation figure is derived, because the county file carries no population of working age to divide by. No state or national rate is computed from the counties. A state is its own BLS series and the nation another program’s, and this hub does not print either.

Revisions, and the replace rule

BLS revises the history every spring, back several years, so a figure here can differ from what BLS first published for the same month. Each page shows the date its figures were last updated. The figures are as of BLS’s county file: BLS’s county file was checked November 4, 2026, and its newest month is September 2026. The newest month is preliminary, which BLS marks in the file, and is revised the month after.

The eleven-month annual average

BLS did not collect its October 2025 household survey, so the county file has no October 2025 figures, and BLS footnotes the 2025 annual averages it published instead as eleven-month averages. In BLS’s words: “These 11-month averages are not strictly comparable to annual averages for prior years.” Every average BLS footnotes this way is marked as eleven months on these pages. Of the 3,143 counties with a 2025 average, BLS footnotes 3,143 as eleven months.

Geography and names

The geography is OMB Bulletin 23-01’s, carried back to 1990: Connecticut’s planning regions replaced its counties in the series, and a county that did not exist in a year has no figure for it. A county is identified by its five-digit FIPS code, which LAUS shares with the Census Bureau, and named from the Census Bureau’s county list, its newest year, until BLS’s own area list is read. A county the Census Bureau’s list does not name, such as Puerto Rico’s municipios, has no page yet.

What is not published

A value BLS does not publish is printed as not published, never as zero, and BLS gives no reason for a missing value. Where BLS prints a dash in place of a value, the page prints “Not published”, and a chart leaves a gap. BLS’s footnote codes are kept as the file has them; the two decoded here are the preliminary mark and the eleven-month mark.

The check against BLS’s own figures

Every figure here is a row of BLS’s county file, retrieved November 4, 2026. The independently produced value each is to be held against is a figure BLS prints elsewhere for the same month, in its own tables or releases, which this site has not yet read. That comparison is not built yet, and until it is, these pages are not listed.

What this data cannot show

  • These are model-based estimates of people by where they live, not a count of jobs. BLS estimates each county’s resident labor force from surveys and administrative records; where people work, and in what industry, is another program’s question.
  • BLS revises the history every spring, back several years, so a figure here can differ from what BLS first published for the same month.
  • 2025’s annual averages are eleven-month averages, because October 2025’s survey was not collected. BLS: “These 11-month averages are not strictly comparable to annual averages for prior years.”
  • The geography is OMB Bulletin 23-01’s, carried back to 1990: Connecticut’s planning regions replaced its counties in the series, and a county that did not exist in a year has no figure for it.
  • A value BLS does not publish is printed as not published, never as zero, and BLS gives no reason for a missing value.
  • No state or national rate is computed from the counties. A state is its own BLS series and the nation another program’s, and this hub does not print either.
  • A change in a county’s rate can be a revision, a boundary change, a change in BLS’s model or a change in the economy, and these figures cannot tell them apart.
  • No demographic fields: the county series carry no breakdown by race, sex or age, and the hub publishes none.

Sources

Data retrieved