Workforce Wednesdays

January 1, 2025

Happy New Year! Read these Helpful Tips for using Labor Market Data...

The New Year might tempt you to make comparisons to previous years, but use caution…

Statistics can be misleading if comparing different data sets, rely on our Labor Market Information Department to provide the data you need. When it comes to Mississippi labor market data, MDES has the most accurate.

When using state and local area unemployment rate data:

Remember substate data, i.e., county/city, is not seasonally adjusted

Use not seasonally adjusted, State and/or National data, when comparing to substate data

When looking at changes in not seasonally adjusted data, the best comparison is over the year change 

Use our Workforce Information Database (WID) for virtual labor market information… Virtual MS LMI from our WID

mdes.ms.gov