Unemployment rate is a key economic indicator that helps us understand the health of a nation’s job market and economy. It measures the percentage of people who are unemployed among those who are available and actively seeking work. It’s a lagging measure, meaning it takes time to rise or fall with economic trends.
In most countries, the unemployment rate is reported monthly and compared to the previous month or year. But it can be hard to make apples-to-apples comparisons when the definitions of employment and unemployment differ between countries.
Most countries report their unemployment rates according to an established international standard, which makes it easier to compare data from different countries. But there are still some differences in how the data is collected and processed. These differences can affect the accuracy of the statistics, so it’s important to keep this in mind when interpreting international data.
In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces a monthly report on employment and unemployment. The report is based on the Current Population Survey (CPS), which interviews a random sample of households each month. The CPS is conducted by the Census Bureau, part of the Department of Commerce. BLS also conducts specialized surveys that provide employment data for state, metropolitan, and other local areas of the country.
The most commonly known statistic is the national unemployment rate, which reflects the number of unemployed workers as a percent of the civilian labor force (the total number of employed and unemployed people in the country). But there are other, more comprehensive measures of labor underutilization, including underemployment, involuntary part-time workers, and so-called marginally attached workers (people who want full-time jobs but have had to settle for part-time work because it’s their only option). These other metrics are not tracked as frequently as the unemployment rate, but they can offer insight into broader economic issues that may be driving the overall trend.