The federal government shutdown disrupted the collection of data used to calculate Iowa’s unemployment rate.
Iowa Workforce Development spokesman Jesse Dougherty says the agency expects to release unemployment data for the final two months of the year in January.
“The month of October will actually not have, there’s not data there to then compile an unemployment rate, but there is data to compile a job survey,” he explains. “And so what the federal partners have recommended, and what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be releasing October and November data at the same time.”
Dougherty says November data should return the reporting schedule to normal.
“November as a whole is going to be a normal month, it’s just that it is taking them longer to compile because it was delayed,” he says.
Dougherty says data for October and November is expected to be released next month.
“By the time we hit the first week of the New Year, we’re gonna have a much better indication of where things are headed,” Dougherty says.
Survey information for September had already been collected prior to the government shutdown and was released earlier this month. That data showed Iowa’s unemployment rate fell to 3.7%, down one-tenth of a percentage point.
