Unemployment rate drops 1.3%, number of unemployed falls Beauregard Daily News BATON ROUGE – Preliminary data for December 2020 released today by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) shows that the number of seasonally adjusted unemployed individuals was 151,160, a drop of 26,871 from the November 2020 figure of 178,031. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate also declined over the month by 1.3 percentage points to 7.2%. This is the lowest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for the state since March 2020. Since November 2020, the number of seasonally adjusted employed individuals increased by 31,456 from 1,910,222 to 1,941,678 in December 2020. From December 2019, the number of seasonally adjusted employed individuals decreased by 51,530. The civilian labor force, or the number of people employed or looking for work, rose to 2,092,838, a gain of 4,585 from November 2020. The series is down 9,367 individuals from the December 2019 figure of 2,102,205.