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Smoothed seasonally adjusted data for metropolitan areas and metropolitan divisions reflecting the 2020 Census-based Office of Management and Budget (OMB) delineations were introduced on July 2, 2025. These replaced the smoothed seasonally adjusted data based on the 2010 OMB delineations that had been removed on March 17, when the not seasonally adjusted input data were converted from the 2010- to the 2020-based OMB delineations. Following comprehensive revision of the not seasonally adjusted data from 2016 forward on April 18, the seasonal adjustment models were re-specified. See LAUS Geography and Data Changes in 2025 for more information.
Effective with the release of metropolitan area data for May 2011, the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program began to publish seasonally-adjusted civilian labor force and unemployment estimates for all metropolitan areas and metropolitan divisions. These data are updated via the downloadable files below on the day of each Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment news release. (See www.bls.gov/schedule/news_release/metro.htm for a schedule of upcoming release dates.) The files contain estimates from January 1990 forward. The statistical technique used to adjust estimates is SEATS, or Signal Extraction in ARIMA (Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average) Time Series. Following seasonal adjustment, the data are smoothed using a Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space (RKHS) filter. For each area and division, separate SEATS specifications are used to seasonally adjust employment and unemployment levels, from which civilian labor force levels and unemployment rates are then derived. The SEATS specifications also vary by decade (1990-99 and 2000 forward), in order to minimize performance problems stemming from decennial discontinuities in the not-seasonally-adjusted input data.
For the sake of completeness, data for model-based areas and divisions are included in the files below. These are the Cleveland, OH; Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI; and Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA, metropolitan areas and the Chicago-Naperville-Schaumburg, IL; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale, CA; and Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL, metropolitan divisions. Data for these model-based areas and divisions first are seasonally adjusted using an X-11 type of filter then are smoothed using an RKHS filter, as are the model-based data for states.
Last Modified Date: July 2, 2025