Unemployment on the Delmarva Peninsula by County:  December 2007 (PDF)

In December, Queen Anne’s County, Md., reported the lowest unemployment rate on the Delmarva Peninsula¹, 3.1 percent, followed by New Castle County, Del., 3.3 percent, and Kent County, Del., and Kent County, Md., 3.4 percent each, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor.  Regional Commissioner Sheila Watkins noted that Worcester County, Md., registered the highest unemployment rate on the Delmarva Peninsula, 8.7 percent.  Overall, 5 of the 14 counties located on the peninsula recorded unemployment rates that were above the U.S. rate of 4.8 percent, while the remaining 9 counties registered jobless rates that were lower than that of the nation.  (See chart A.  All data in this release are not seasonally adjusted; accordingly, over-the-year analysis is used throughout.)

Chart A. Unemployment rates for the United States and counties on the Delmarva Peninsula, December 2007

Only 2 of the 14 counties located on the Delmarva Peninsula, Kent and Somerset in Maryland, had unemployment rates that were lower in December 2007 than a year earlier.  Nine counties recorded unemployment rate increases over the year, while three registered the same jobless rates in December 2006 and December 2007.  Accomack County, Va., registered the largest over-the-year unemployment rate increase (+1.0 percentage point), followed closely by Sussex County, Del. (+0.9 point).  (See table A.)

While the December 2007 unemployment rates on the Delmarva Peninsula were generally higher than those of December 2006, only three counties have surpassed the levels reached six years earlier, after the end of the last recession.  The county with the largest net increase from December 2001 was Accomack, in Virginia, where the rate went from 4.5 percent in December 2001 to 5.3 percent in December 2007.  In December 2001, jobless rates ranged from 3.3 percent in New Castle County, Del., to 10.0 percent in Worcester County, Md.

December 2007 jobless rates in the 14 counties on the Delmarva Peninsula were generally higher than the corresponding jobless rates for the individual states in which the counties were located.  Overall, the three states had quite similar rates--3.2 percent in Virginia, 3.4 percent in Delaware, and 3.5 percent in Maryland.  On the peninsula, however, unemployment rates in Virginia’s two counties were both above 4.0 percent.  In Maryland, six of the nine counties had rates exceeding 4.0 percent.  In Delaware, all three of its counties are part of the Delmarva Peninsula, so the State’s jobless rate is not impacted by counties in other parts of the State.  However, only one of its three counties, Sussex, had a rate of at least 4.0 percent in December 2007.

Technical Notes

This release presents unemployment rate data from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program, a federal-state cooperative endeavor.  The data contained in this release are based on the same concepts and definitions as those used for the official national estimates obtained from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a sample survey of households that is conducted for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) by the U.S. Census Bureau.  The labor force includes both the employed and the unemployed.  Employed persons are those who did any work at all for pay or profit in the survey reference week (the week including the 12th of the month) or worked 15 hours or more without pay in a family business or farm, plus those not working who had a job from which they were temporarily absent, whether or not paid, for such reasons as labor-management dispute, illness, or vacation.  Unemployed persons are those who did not work at all (in the reference week), had actively looked for a job (sometime in the 4-week period ending with the survey reference week), and were currently available for work; persons on layoff expecting recall need not be looking for work to be counted as unemployed.  The unemployment rate is the number of unemployed as a percent of the labor force.

Effective January 2005, estimates for all census divisions, states, the District of Columbia, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale metropolitan division, and New York City were produced using updated time-series models with real-time benchmarking.  This will improve the statistical basis of the estimation for these areas and provide important tools for analysis, such as measures of error and seasonally adjusted series.  For all other substate areas, estimates are prepared through indirect estimation procedures.  Employment estimates, which are based largely on "place of work" estimates from the Current Employment Statistics (CES) program, are adjusted to refer to place of residence as used in the CPS.  Unemployment estimates are aggregates of persons previously employed in industries covered by state unemployment (UI) laws and entrants to the labor force data from the CPS.  The substate estimates of employment and unemployment, which geographically exhaust the entire state, are adjusted proportionally to ensure that they add to the independently estimated state or balance-of-state totals.  A detailed description of the estimation procedures is available from BLS upon request.

Data shown for the prior year reflect adjustments made at the end of each year, usually implemented with January estimates.  The adjusted estimates reflect updated population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, any revisions in the other data sources, and model reestimation at the state but not at the county level.  All substate area estimates are adjusted to add to the revised model-based estimates. 

For personal assistance or further information on the Local Area Unemployment Statistics data, as well as other Bureau data, contact the Mid-Atlantic Information Office at 215-597-3282 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET.  Information on the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program and other surveys and programs is available on our Web site at www.bls.gov/ro3/.