Wow, my initial “About” post is becoming increasingly obsolete. In the interest of journalistic transparency, let me divulge a little hypocrisy before I flood this place with unemployment statistics. Here is an excerpt from my first post:

I will try and refrain from relying solely on numbers whenever humanly possible. These statistics are certainly useful in many situations, but they can sometimes lead to a callous brand of storytelling devoid of human elements. I intend to focus on the individuals and their unique stories rather than the various graphs and spreadsheets in which they are represented.

Okay, now I feel better. Let us delve into a brand of storytelling completely devoid of human essence!

While I was cruising the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics website (which I often do), I came across some startling unemployment numbers. Apparently, Nevada is not doing so well when it comes to employment percentage.

A survey conducted in January by Bureau of Labor Statistics found Nevada to be among the states with the highest percentage of unemployed workers. With 5.5 percent of its labor force unemployed, Nevada ranked 39th on the list (well within the bottom tier). In comparison, South Dakota, the state ranked number one with the lowest unemployment percentage had only 2.6 percent of its labor force out of work. According to yet another BLS survey, 4.9 percent of the entire US labor force was unemployed in January.

The BLS defines Unemployed persons as:

persons aged 16 years and older who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed.

It is probably not fair to compare Nevada to South Dakota, so I will take a look at some of the Silver State’s neighbors. Utah ranked fifth on the list with only 3 percent unemployed. New Mexico was tied for sixth with 3.1 percent. Arizona occupies a spot closer to Nevada with 4.3 percent unemployed.

In all fairness, Nevada’s economy is entirely divergent from the aforementioned states. The only other state with a pronounced gaming presence is New Jersey, which also ranks above Nevada.

More shocking were the statistics for Las Vegas, where 5.7 percent of the labor force is unemployed. Another report approximated 55,726 of the 979,576 workers in Las Vegas were jobless in January.

These numbers are troubling. I was led to believe that Nevada was home to a booming economy that offered plenty of jobs. Perhaps I was led astray.