Unemployment By Industry

In one of the New York Time’s Economix blog posts, Motoko Rich discusses changes in the unemployment rate by industry from February 2011 to February 2012, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  While unemployment remained relatively unchanged at 8.3 percent in February “mainly because more people started – or resumed – looking for work,” the data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows quite a bit of variability in unemployment between industries.  For example, as the table from the Bureau of Labor Statistics above shows, construction experienced a 4.7% decrease (from 21.8 % to 17.1%). Agriculture; information; and mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction all saw increases in unemployment of 1.1%, 1.7% and 1.6% respectively.  In addition to changes in unemployment rate, the rates themselves also vary widely; agricultural workers experienced an unemployment rate of 19.5% while government workers experienced only 3.9% unemployment.