Indiana Gets Revised Unemployment Rate For September; Sees Drop In Rate For October

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics made the revision after discovering an immediate change needed to the unemployment rate model.

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INDIANAPOLIS – It turns out Indiana had a better unemployment rate in September than originally reported.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Indiana’s jobless rate for September has been revised to 3.5 percent, instead of the originally released unemployment rate of 4.0 percent on October 22.

BLS made the revision after discovering an immediate change needed to the unemployment rate model that affected the East North Central Region, which includes Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

BLS said unemployment statistical models used to calculate labor force data have been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Effective October 2021, BLS changed its approach to detecting and adjusting for outliers in monthly statewide data.

On Friday, the Indiana Department of Workforce Development released unemployment numbers for October. The state’s jobless rate currently stands at 3.3 percent, which is below the national rate of 4.6 percent.

The monthly unemployment rate is a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicator that reflects the number of unemployed people seeking employment within the prior four weeks as a percentage of the labor force.