BLS Now Publishing Monthly Data for American Indians and Alaska Natives

I am pleased to announce that BLS is now publishing monthly labor force estimates for American Indians and Alaska Natives! For years we’ve published a small set of annual labor market estimates for American Indians and Alaska Natives in our yearly report on labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity. And we’ve also combined multiple years of data to do more in-depth analyses. But we haven’t published our key economic metrics—such as the unemployment rate, the employment–population ratio, and the labor force participation rate—on a monthly basis for American Indians and Alaska Natives. Monthly estimates give us timely measures to see how groups are faring in the labor market.

The jobless rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives peaked at 28.6 percent in April 2020 (not seasonally adjusted), early in the COVID-19 pandemic. This was nearly double the seasonally adjusted rate of 14.7 percent for the total population. The higher rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives reflects, in part, the extremely sharp increase at the start of the pandemic in the unemployment rate for service occupations. American Indians and Alaska Natives are considerably more likely to work in service occupations compared with the overall labor force. By contrast, the unemployment rate rose less sharply at the start of the pandemic for management, professional, and related occupations and other occupation groups in which American Indians and Alaska Natives are less represented. The unemployment rate for American Indians and Alaska Natives has declined since April 2020 and was 11.1 percent in January 2022, still much higher than the rate of 4.0 percent for the overall population.

Editor’s note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

In general, American Indians and Alaska Natives are less likely than the overall population to be employed. In April 2020, the employment–population ratio for American Indians and Alaska Natives declined to 42.4 percent, 8.9 percentage points below the ratio of 51.3 percent for the overall population. Since then, the ratio for American Indians and Alaska Natives has risen and stood at 52.7 percent in January 2022, 7.0 percentage points below the ratio of 59.7 percent for the population overall.

Editor’s note: Data for this chart are available in the table below.

The measures for American Indians and Alaska Natives tend to be fairly volatile for two main reasons. First, the estimates are based on a small sample size. We survey about 60,000 U.S. households every month, and respondents who identify as American Indians and Alaska Natives make up about 1 percent of the labor force. Because of that small sample size, the month-to-month change in the unemployment rate must be pretty large to be statistically significant—around 3 percentage points.

Second, these data are not seasonally adjusted. Seasonal adjustment is a statistical procedure used to remove the effects of seasonality from data so it’s easier to see underlying trends. But not all data series can be seasonally adjusted; they must pass a battery of diagnostic tests to be fitted to a seasonal adjustment model. So far, we haven’t been able to do that for data for American Indians and Alaska Natives, but we’ll keep evaluating them as we get more data. Because these data aren’t seasonally adjusted, it can be challenging to compare one month to the following month.

We’re also publishing quarterly estimates for American Indians and Alaska Natives for the first time starting this month. Because these estimates are averages of three months of data, they are somewhat less volatile.