October 24, 2005 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

State unemployment rates in September 2005

State unemployment rates were generally little changed in September, with the exceptions of Louisiana and Mississippi, the two States most affected by Hurricane Katrina.

[Chart data—TXT]

In September, Louisiana posted the highest state jobless rate, 11.5 percent, followed by Mississippi, 9.6 percent. Louisiana and Mississippi reported the largest unemployment rate increases from August. Louisiana's over-the-month rate increase (+5.7 percentage points) was the largest of any state since these series began in 1976, while Mississippi's (+2.7 points) equaled the previous record.

These data are from the BLS Local Area Unemployment Statistics program. To learn more, see "Regional and State Employment and Unemployment: September 2005" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 05-1978. For the September unemployment estimates, BLS and its State partners made a number of modifications to the standard estimating procedures to better reflect the unemployment situation; for details, see http://www.bls.gov/katrina/lausquestions.htm.