INDIANAPOLIS - Indiana’s unemployment rate for September 2021, which stood at 4.0% when released on October 22, has since been revised downward to 3.5% by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Indiana’s labor force participation rate for September also has been revised downward by BLS, from 63.0% to 62.9%.

The BLS made the revision after discovering an immediate change needed to the unemployment rate model that affected the East North Central Region, which includes Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

The BLS said unemployment statistical models used to calculate labor force data have been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Effective October 2021, BLS changed its approach to detecting and adjusting for outliers in monthly statewide data. The distortions made to January-August 2021 statewide labor force estimates will be modified during the annual benchmarking process in February 2022.

Indiana’s unemployment rate stands at 3.3 percent for October, and the national rate is 4.6 percent. The monthly unemployment rate is a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicator that reflects the number of unemployed people seeking employment within the prior four weeks as a percentage of the labor force.

Indiana’s labor force had a net decrease of 9,183 over the previous month. This was a result of a decrease of 7,030 unemployed residents and a decrease of 2,153 employed residents.

Indiana's total labor force, which includes both Hoosiers employed and those seeking employment, stands at 3.33 million, and the state’s 62.7 percent labor force participation rate remains above the national rate of 61.6 percent.