Maui County Unemployment Rate Increases Slightly in June

Graphic: Wendy Osher.

By Maui Now Staff

Maui County’s unemployment rate of 4.4 % (not seasonally adjusted) saw a slight increase over May’s rate of 3.9%, but is still well below the June 2014 rate of 5.1%, according to the Hawai‘i State Department of Labor & Industrial Relations.

The rate for the Island of Maui was up to 4.2% compared with May’s 3.8 percent, but still lower that last year’s 4.8%.

Moloka‘i’s rate jumped to 11% this month compared to May’s 8.9%, but is lower than last year’s 13.4%.

Lāna‘i’s rate remains low at 2.5%, increasing only slightly from May’s 2.6%, and well below last year’s 3.5%.

The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for June was 4 percent, down from 4.1 percent in January through May.

Statewide, 648,850 were employed and 26,850 unemployed in June for a total seasonally adjusted labor force of 675,700.

Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.3 percent in June, down from 5.5 percent in May.

Statewide, both initial claims and weeks claims decreased by 373 or 21.3 percent and 2,579 or 24.2 percent respectively for unemployment benefits compared to one year ago. Over-the-month initial claims rose 4.9 percent while weeks claims deceased by 1.5 percent from May 2015.

The unemployment rate figures for the state and the US in this release are seasonally adjusted, in accordance with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics methodology. The not seasonally adjusted rate for the state was 4.4 percent in June, up from 3.9 percent in May.

Seasonal Adjustment
The seasonal fluctuations in the number of employed and unemployed persons reflect hiring and layoff patterns that accompany regular events such as the winter holiday season and the summer vacation season. These variations make it difficult to tell whether month-to-month changes in employment and unemployment are due to normal seasonal patterns or to changing economic conditions. Therefore, the BLS uses a statistical technique called seasonal adjustment to address these issues. This technique uses the history of the labor force data and the job count data to identify the seasonal movements and to calculate the size and direction of these movements. A seasonal adjustment factor is then developed and applied to the estimates to eliminate the effects of regular seasonal fluctuations on the data. Seasonally adjusted statistical series enable more meaningful data comparisons between months or with an annual average.