Maui County’s Unemployment Rate at 3.1% in December

The Hawai‘i State Department of Labor & Industrial Relations announced that the unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) for Maui County in December 2015 was 3.1%, down from 3.4% in November 2015 and down from 3.8% in December 2014.

The unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) for the island of Maui was at 3% in December 2015, down from 3.2 in November 2015, and down from 3.6% in December 2014.

Moloka‘i’s unemployment rate in December 2015 (not seasonally adjusted) was 6.4% in December 2015, down from 10.1% in November 2015 and down from 8.5% in December 2014.

Lāna‘i’s unemployment rate (not seasonally adjusted) in December 2015 was 3.6%, down from 3.9 in November 2015 and up from 2.3% in December 2014.

The state’s unemployment rate for December 2015 ((not seasonally adjusted) was 2.9% in December 2015, down from 3.2 in November 2015 and down from 3.7% in December 2014.

The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for December 2015 was 3.2%, down from the revised rate of 3.3% in November 2015.

The last time the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was at 3.2% was in January 2008.

Statewide, 660,600 were employed and 22,150 unemployed in December for a total seasonally adjusted labor force of 682,750.

Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5% in December, the same as in November.

Both initial claims and weeks claims decreased by 320 or -20.3%t and 2,491 or -27.1% respectively for unemployment benefits compared to one year ago.

Over the month, both initial claims and weeks claims increased by 21.5% and 1.3% respectively from November 2015.

The unemployment rate figures for Hawai‘i and the US in this release are seasonally adjusted, in accordance with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics methodology.

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.

For the complete DLIR report, go online.