page_title: Unemployment
section_title: United States Bureau of Labor statistics
hierarchical_section_title: Unemployment / Measurement / United States Bureau of Labor statistics
context_page_description: Unemployment, according to the OECD, if persons above a specified age not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the reference period.
  Unemployment is measured by the unemployment rate, which is the number of people who are unemployed as a percentage of the labour force.
  Unemployment can have many sources, such as the following:
  new technologies and inventions
  the status of the economy, which can be influenced by a recession
  competition caused by globalization and international trade
  policies of the government
  regulation and market
  Unemployment and the status of the economy can be influenced by a country through, for example, fiscal policy. Furthermore, the monetary authority of a country, such as the central bank, can influence the availability and cost for money through its monetary policy.
  In addition to theories of unemployment, a few categorisations of unemployment are used for more precisely modelling the effects of unemployment within the economic system. Some of the main types of unemployment include structural unemployment, frictional unemployment, cyclical unemployment, involuntary unemployment and classical unemployment.
context_section_description: The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures employment and unemployment (of those over 17 years of age) by using two different labor force surveys conducted by the United States Census Bureau (within the United States Department of Commerce) and/or the Bureau of Labor Statistics (within the United States Department of Labor) that gather employment statistics monthly. The Current Population Survey (CPS), or "Household Survey," conducts a survey based on a sample of 60,000 households. The survey measures the unemployment rate based on the ILO definition.
  The Current Employment Statistics survey (CES), or "Payroll Survey," conducts a survey based on a sample of 160,000 businesses and government agencies, which represent 400,000 individual employers. Since the survey measures only civilian nonagricultural employment, it does not calculate an unemployment rate, and it differs from the ILO unemployment rate definition. Both sources have different classification criteria and usually produce differing results. Additional data are also available from the government, such as the unemployment insurance weekly claims report available from the Office of Workforce Security, within the U.S. Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration. The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides up-to-date numbers via a PDF linked here. The BLS also provides a readable concise current Employment Situation Summary, updated monthly.
  The Bureau of Labor Statistics also calculates six alternate measures of unemployment, U1 to U6, which measure different aspects of unemployment:
  U1: Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.
  U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.
  U3: Official unemployment rate, per the ILO definition, occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively looked for work within the past four weeks.
  U4: U3 + "discouraged workers", or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.
  U5: U4 + other "marginally attached workers," or "loosely attached workers," or those who "would like" and are able to work but have not looked for work recently.
  U6: U5 + Part-time workers who want to work full-time, but cannot for economic reasons (underemployment).
  Note: "Marginally attached workers" are added to the total labour force for unemployment rate calculation for U4, U5, and U6. The BLS revised the CPS in 1994 and among the changes the measure representing the official unemployment rate was renamed U3 instead of U5. In 2013, Representative Hunter proposed that the Bureau of Labor Statistics use the U5 rate instead of the current U3 rate.
  Statistics for the US economy as a whole hide variations among groups. For example, in January 2008, the US unemployment rates were 4.4% for adult men, 4.2% for adult women, 4.4% for Caucasians, 6.3% for Hispanics or Latinos (all races), 9.2% for African Americans, 3.2% for Asian Americans, and 18.0% for teenagers. Also, the US unemployment rate would be at least 2% higher if prisoners and jail inmates were counted.
  The unemployment rate is included in a number of major economic indices including the US Conference Board's Index of Leading Indicators a macroeconomic measure of the state of the economy.
caption: Unemployment rate in the US by county in 2008[51]   1.2–3%  3.1–4%  4.1–5%  5.1–6%  6.1–7%  7.1–8%  8.1–9%  9.1–10%  10.1–11%  11.1–13%  13.1–22.9%