The Nebraska Department of Labor (NDOL) announced today that Nebraska’s preliminary unemployment rate for January was 2.8 percent, seasonally adjusted. The rate was unchanged from the December 2018 rate of 2.8 percent and is down 0.1 percentage points from the January 2018 rate of 2.9 percent.

“Industries again experienced normal seasonal declines in January, while the state’s total labor force and number of employed workers in the labor force were both up over the month and over the year,” said Commissioner of Labor John H. Albin.

Nonfarm employment for January 2019 was 1,009,954. Benchmarked nonfarm employment data will be published on March 22, at which time comparisons to 2018 data will be available.

The national seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for January was 4.0 percent, up 0.1 percentage points from the December 2018 rate of 4.0 percent and down 0.1 percentage points from the January 2018 rate of 4.1 percent.

February 2019 Nebraska data will be published Friday, March 22. December 2018 and January 2018 unemployment data is provided for comparison purposes only. Statewide and substate 2014-2018 benchmarked labor force data and 2017 and 2018 benchmarked nonfarm employment will be published on Friday, April 19. Benchmarking is the annual process of aligning estimated data from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program with known employment numbers from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program. It is a necessary step in ensuring the data released by the NDOL is of the highest quality. For more January 2019 data, go to dol.nebraska.gov/InfoLink. A listing of job centers can be found through the Contact Us link at dol.nebraska.gov.

Nonfarm employment data can be found at NEworks.nebraska.gov/CES and Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) data can be found at NEworks.nebraska.gov/LAUS. Prepared and distributed by Nebraska Department of Labor (NDOL). NDOL press releases are accessible at: dol.nebraska.gov