JQL for labels NOT IN and labels != does not work

[joecline]

I've tried various JQL to get only issues without a Deferred label and none of them seem to work. Am I doing something incorrectly? 

Issue I'm trying to get returned:

All the below queries returned no results. 

[Evgenii · Accepted solution]

Hi, @joecline 

Please, try next query:

project = "RES" AND (labels not in (Deferred) OR labels IS EMPTY)

[joecline]

That worked! thanks!

[Keith Robertson]

Instead of

labels != Deferred

labels not in (Deferred, HighlyVisible)

use

# Select ticket if missing the named label.
NOT (labels = Deferred)

# Select ticket if missing ANY of the named labels.
NOT (labels = Deferred AND labels = HighlyVisible)

# Select ticket only if missing ALL of the named labels.
NOT (labels in (Deferred, HighlyVisible))

These avoid having to check whether labels IS EMPTY.