More than 35,000 adults were employed when a Labour Force Survey was carried out last year, a report showed yesterday.Wayne Furbert, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, released the November 2019 findings from the Department of Statistics.It showed that the working population — residents aged 16 and over were employed at the time of the survey — totalled 35,748.The report showed that an additional 1,394 people were part of the labour force but unemployed.It added that the working population included 5,570 people who were underemployed.The LFS report said that the overall unemployment rate was 3.8 per cent but that the comparable figure for Bermudians was 4.4 per cent.It said 17,003 people were “economically inactive”, which was described as those aged 16 and over who were neither employed nor unemployed, such as retirees or full-time students who were not looking for work.Although it showed economic activity indicators for the 12-month period from November 2018, the report warned against making direction comparisons with the previous year’s figures.A technical note explained: “The November 2019 LFS sampling frame differed from previous surveys as it was based on all private households inclusive of households without telephone numbers.“Beforehand, the sampling frame included only households with telephone numbers.”It added: “In previous LFS exercises, households completed interviews on a first-come, first-served basis as long as the household was in the sampling pool. “Furthermore, if a household was not available after one attempt, the interviewer would move on to another household which could have been in the sampling pool. “In the November 2019 LFS, this methodology was refined to address selection bias. “Households were advised not to contact the department for an interview so that the interviewers could focus on securing completed interviews for sampled households only.“Additionally, each selected household was given several attempts to participate in the survey by telephone and in-person. “Only after multiple attempts were made was another household from the sampling pool selected for an interview.” The report said: “Due to the alterations in the sampling frame and household replacement method in the November 2019 LFS, the data variations between surveys reflect a combination of real change and change resulting from these modifications. “Therefore, users are cautioned against making direct comparisons with the November 2018 results. “In addition, users are cautioned against making direct comparisons between May LFS results and November LFS results as the data has not been seasonally adjusted.”The report said that the survey reference week was November 13 to 19, 2019 and that data was collected from November 21, 2019 to February 24, this year.It added: “The survey data was weighted to reflect the number of households and population counts from the 2019 population projections based on the 2016 Population and Housing Census.”