| Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Data for September are the first from the household survey (Current Population Survey or CPS) and the establishment survey. (Current Employment Statistics survey or CES) to reflect the impact of Hurricane Katrina. In September, the CPS was conducted largely according to standard procedures. Efforts were made to contact households in storm-affected areas with the exception of Orleans and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana, which were under mandatory evacuation orders when interviewer instructions were issued. For the September CES estimates, several modifications to the usual estimation procedures were adopted to better reflect employment in Katrina-affected areas. The changes included: a) modification of procedures to impute employment counts for survey nonrespondents in the most heavily impacted areas, b) adjustments to sample weights for sample units in the more broadly defined disaster area to compensate for lower-than-average survey response rates, and c) modification of the adjustment procedure for the business net birth/death estimator to reflect likely changes in business birth/death patterns in the disaster areas. Hurricane Rita made landfall during the September data collection period. As a result, response rates for both surveys were lower than normal in some areas. However, because the reference periods for both surveys occurred before Hurricane Rita struck, the impact of this storm on measures of employment and unemployment was negligible. For more information on household and establishment survey procedures and estimates for September 2005, see http://www.bls.gov/katrina/cpscesquestions.htm |