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National labor market statistics for January 2015 released

The nation's unemployment rate, at 5.7 percent, changed little in January and has shown no net change since October. The number of unemployed persons, at 9.0 million, was little changed in January.

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 257,000 in January. Job gains occurred in retail trade, construction, health care, financial activities and manufacturing. After incorporating revisions for November and December (which include the impact of the annual benchmark process), monthly job gains averaged 336,000 over the past three months.

See the full Employment Situation Summary published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Seasonally adjusted December labor force data for metro areas available

Seasonally adjusted labor force data for South Dakota's Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) of Rapid City and Sioux Falls for December 2014 are available from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). See the BLS news release or download the data from the BLS website now. Historical data back to 2000 is available upon request to the BLS. January 2015 data will be available from BLS March 20. See our release dates for other future releases. For more information about seasonally adjusted labor force data for metropolitan areas, please see the Question and Answer document prepared by BLS.

Overview of South Dakota labor market

December 2014 labor force and nonfarm industry employment data is now available online. See an overview of the new data.

Snapshot of South Dakota's economy

Get a quick synopsis, or snapshot, of the most current data available for numerous closely watched economic indicators.

Labor market information barometer

A real time labor market Information line graph, "LMI Barometer," graphically monitors fluctuations in the state's labor market, comparing the number of South Dakota residents seeking employment with the number of available jobs and the number of New Hires reported, using the most current data possible. See the LMI Barometer.

Rapid City metro area designation changing

The Rapid City Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) has changed to include Custer County as well as the previously-included counties of Pennington and Meade. MSAs, designated by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), must have at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more population, plus adjacent territory that has a high degree of social and economic integration with the core as measured by commuting ties.

The various data sets available from LMIC will be phasing this new three-county Rapid City MSA designation into the data over the next several months. For example, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wage data set has incorporated Custer County data into data for the Rapid City MSA beginning with data for first quarter 2014 (January, February and March 2014), available now on this website. The labor force data set will begin using the new MSA designation with January 2015 data. Footnotes will be used to identify when Custer County data has been added to the Rapid City MSA data for each respective data set, until the change has been implemented across all data sets.

Release dates

Click here to find out when the next data release from LMIC will be.

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