County Unemployment Rate Sees Slight Drop

Unemployment. Maui Now Stock Photo

The unemployment rate for Maui County was 2.5 percent in November, compared to 2.7 percent in October and the same time last year, the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations announced.

According to the department, the November unemployment rate for the island of Maui was 2.5 percent, compared to 2.6 percent the month before and 2.7 percent last November. Molokaʻiʻs unemployment rate this November was 4.5 percent, while Lānaʻiʻs was 1.9 percent.

Those rates are not seasonally adjusted. The seasonal fluctuations in the number of employed and unemployed people reflect hiring and layoff patterns during regular events like 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,” the department said in a press release.

“Therefore, the BLS US Bureau of Labor Statistics) uses a statistical technique called seasonal adjustment to address these issues.”

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for the entire state in November was 2.6 percent, compared to 2.7 percent from August to October.

Over 17,000 people were unemployed across the state in November.

Nationally, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in November, compared to 3.6 percent in October.

These unemployment rate figures for the State of Hawai‘i 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 2.5 percent in November, compared to the 2.6 percent in October.