What is Maine’s Unemployment Rate? August Update
Today Maine’s Department of Labor released new unemployment data for August, 2009. It contains some good news and bad news.
First, the good news. As I blogged on earlier, Maine’s labor force has been shrinking and had set an unprecedented record of six consecutive months of decline. That record will not get worse as the labor force grew slightly by 678 people. Although this is a small number and we still have to hope it does not get revised away in the future.
The higher labor force also means fewer “shadow unemployment” folks which left the modified unemployment rate at 9.8 percent (click “continue reading” to view chart).
However, the bad news is that the ranks of the unemployed grew by 792 people. As a result, the unemployment rate rose to 8.6 percent from 8.5 percent.
