Maui County November Unemployment 7.7%

Photo courtesy of DLIR.

By Sonia Isotov

The Hawaii State Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR) announced today that the not-seasonally adjusted Maui County unemployment rate increased to 7.7% for the month of November 2011.

This is a .1% increase over October 2011, and a .5% decrease over November 2010.

Maui Island unemployment was 7.4%, Molokai, 15.5%, and Lanai 4.2% for the month of November 2012. All island saw a decrease year-over-year, except Molokai which saw a 1.9% increase.

Statewide not-seasonally adjusted unemployment for the month of November 2011 was 6.5% and the US was 8.2%.

In seasonally-adjusted figures, Hawaii unemployment was 6.5% and the US 8.6% for November 2011.

The seasonal fluctuations in the number of employed and unemployed persons reflects hiring (and layoffs) patterns that accompany regular events such as the winter holiday season and the summer vacation season.

The DLIR states in their announcement that 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.

To deal with such problems, a statistical technique called seasonal adjustment is used. This technique uses the past history of the series 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.

According to the DLIR, when a statistical series has been seasonally adjusted, data for any month can be more meaningfully compared with data from any other month or with an annual average.

Today, the DLIR also announced that expansions in the tourism, professional and business, and health care sectors were large contributors to the 4,600 jobs added in the Hawaii economy over the past year.

Total employment increased by 500 from October to November. The over the month job gains mirrored the year’s gains as the professional and business, and education & health services sectors, expanded by 700 and 500 respectively.