Unemployment rate: methodology

Monthly labor force statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program, requested directly from the BLS public API as published — not seasonally adjusted, and not recomputed here.

Revisions. LAUS restates the prior year each spring when BLS applies its annual benchmark. We do not overwrite what was published before: each run stores its values under a new vintage, so a figure cited last month remains retrievable.

Known gaps. County series begin in 1990. Values are model-based estimates for counties below the CPS sample threshold, which is most of Nevada outside Clark and Washoe; treat small-county month-to-month moves with care.

October 2025 is permanently missing. The lapse in federal appropriations suspended the Current Population Survey that month. The household survey cannot be conducted retroactively, so BLS will never publish an October 2025 figure for any area. We store the period with a null value flagged unavailable rather than dropping the month or interpolating across it: a gap in the chart is the honest representation. Any series you build from this data should expect that hole and not treat it as a zero.