Local Area Unemployment Statistics

The Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program provides monthly and annual employment, unemployment, labor force, and unemployment rate data for New York State, labor market regions, metropolitan areas, counties, workforce investment regions, and municipalities of at least 25,000 people. LAUS is a joint effort between New York State and the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). 

A wide variety of customers use this information:

• The federal government uses the data to allocate money to states and areas, as well as eligibility determinations for assistance.
• State and local governments use the estimates for planning and budgetary purposes and to determine the need for local employment and training services.
• Private industry, researchers, the media, and other individuals use the data to assess local labor market conditions and make comparisons across geographic areas.

The dashboard below can be used to explore the data in multiple ways.

Monthly Data - Allows you to retrieve and compare current and historical seasonally and not seasonally adjusted monthly labor force data for different labor market areas. 

Annual Data - Allows you to retrieve and compare annual labor force data for different labor market areas.

LFPR and EMP/POP - Allows you to retrieve and compare seasonally and not seasonally adjusted Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) and Employment to Population Ratio (EMP/POP) data for Balance of State, New York City, New York State, and the United States.

County Rate Map - Allows you to retrieve not seasonally adjusted monthly county unemployment data.

Note: Most of the time, seasonally adjusted data is the best choice when comparing data from month-to-month. Not seasonally adjusted data is better for comparing data from year-to-year. Seasonally adjusted data is only available for New York State, New York City, the Balance of State, and metropolitan areas.

To learn more about how to use Tableau and download data, check out our guide Tableau Tips for the Web.

If you are having trouble accessing the data provided below because you are using assistive technology, please reach out to your local labor market analyst for assistance.

Questions regarding the LAUS data or the dashboard should be directed to your local labor market analyst.

For more information on the geographical breakdown in New York State see geography explained. For more information concerning labor force statistics see Technical Notes. For additional information on the various sources of employment data, see comparing sources of employment data.

Seasonally adjusted LAUS data for New York State, New York City and Balance of State - The set of historical (1976-present) and current month's seasonally adjusted local area unemployment statistics data for New York State, New York City and Balance of State. All data are from the LAUS program.

Important Notice: LAUS data is revised every year, as part of a process called benchmarking. Benchmarking is done nationwide and is mandated by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Revised labor force data will be released and posted on this web site according to the schedule below.

In April 2023, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the historical estimates for the seasonally adjusted metro areas from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program. For more information, please see https://www.bls.gov/lau/launews1.htm

Note: New dates will be filled in as they are released.

The entire set of currently available historical LAUS data are available by downloading the file, laus.zip.