The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment came out Friday with its latest monthly jobs report, covering August. Here are the key takeaways for the state’s workers:

Explainer: These numbers come from two different government job surveys that don’t always agree: A survey of employers (payroll jobs only) that doesn’t include self-employed people and farm workers, and a survey of households (payroll and non-payroll employment, unemployment, labor force participation) that does include those categories. In the latter survey, people with multiple jobs are counted only once.

“Unemployment” (as the government defines it) means people who don’t have a job and have applied for one in the last four weeks. “Unemployment” figures do NOT include out-of-work people who haven’t sought a job recently, or “discouraged” workers who say they want a job but haven’t applied because they don’t think one is available for them, or people working part-time who say they can’t find a full-time job, or people who aren’t seeking a job because they’re retired, or sick or disabled, or in school, or at home caring for their family.

“Labor force participation” means people with jobs plus unemployed people actively looking for a job. (Sometimes the unemployment rate rises even if employment goes up because more people are entering the labor force who previously weren’t looking for work.)

“Payroll jobs” means working for an employer except for farm workers. It does not include the self employed or certain home domestic workers.