BLS Report: In 2019, 4.9% of families include an unemployed person, down from 5.2% in 2018

[mahatmakanejeeves]

In 2019, 4.9% of families include an unemployed person, down from 5.2% in 2018

Economic News Release USDL-20-0670

Employment Characteristics of Families Summary

For release 10:00 a.m. (EDT) Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Technical information: [e-mail] * www.bls.gov/cps
Media contact: [phone] * [e-mail]


EMPLOYMENT CHARACTERISTICS OF FAMILIES -- 2019


In 2019, 4.9 percent of families included an unemployed person, down from 5.2 percent in 2018, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Of the nation's 82.6 million families, 81.1 percent had at least one employed member in 2019.

These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of about 60,000 households. Data in this news release are annual averages. Families are classified either as married-couple families or as families maintained by women or men without spouses present. Unless otherwise noted, families include those with and without children under age 18. For further information, see the Technical Note in this news release.

Families and Unemployment

The number of families with at least one member unemployed decreased by 224,000 to 4.1 million in 2019. The proportion of families with an unemployed person declined by 0.3 percentage point to 4.9 percent. (This is the lowest proportion since 1994, the first year for which comparable data are available.) In 2019, the proportion of families with an unemployed person was down for White (4.5 percent), Black (7.9 percent), Asian (4.1 percent), and Hispanic (6.6 percent) families. Black and Hispanic families remained more likely to have an unemployed member than White or Asian families. (See table 1.)

In 2019, among families with an unemployed member, 71.2 percent also had at least one family member employed, up from 70.0 percent in the prior year. The proportion of families with an unemployed member that had at least one family member working full time grew to 62.4 percent in 2019.

Among families with an unemployed member, Black families remained less likely to also have at least one family member who was working (60.2 percent) than White (73.7 percent), Asian (82.4 percent), and Hispanic (73.9 percent) families. In 2019, the likelihood of families with an unemployed member also having an employed family member increased for White and Hispanic families, but changed little for Black and Asian families.

In 2019, 3.9 percent of married-couple families had an unemployed member, less than the corresponding percentages of families maintained by men or families maintained by women (7.8 percent and 7.6 percent, respectively). Among families with an unemployed member, those maintained by women were less likely to also have an employed family member (53.7 percent) than families maintained by men and married-couple families (61.4 percent and 82.1 percent, respectively). (See table 3.)

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Parents

The labor force participation rate--the percent of the population working or looking for work--for all women with children under age 18 was 72.3 percent in 2019, up from 71.5 percent in the prior year. Married mothers remained less likely to participate in the labor force, at 69.9 percent, than mothers with other marital statuses, at 77.6 percent. (Other marital status includes persons who are never married; widowed; divorced; separated; and married, spouse absent; as well as persons in same-sex marriages.) The unemployment rate for married mothers was also considerably lower than for mothers with other marital statuses--2.3 percent, compared with 5.9 percent. (See table 5.)

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Table 5. Employment status of the population by sex, marital status, and presence and age of own children under 18, 2018-2019 annual averages

Footnotes
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(3) Refers to persons in opposite-sex married couples only.

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[Pantagruel]

1. 2019 Employment stats ?

Redefining irrelevant!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. It's only April.

Data in this news release are annual averages.