US Unemployment Rate Monthly Analysis: Employment Situation (2024)

FAQs

US Unemployment Rate Monthly Analysis: Employment Situation? ›

US Unemployment Rate is at 4.20%, compared to 4.30% last month and 3.80% last year. This is lower than the long term average of 5.69%. The US Unemployment Rate measures the percentage of total employees in the United States that are a part of the labor force, but are without a job.

The unemployment rate fell a tenth of a percent to 4.2% in August, highlighting the labor market is not decelerating as quickly as forecasted.

The next chart features a 12-month moving average of the UR with the troughs highlighted. The current unemployment rate of 4.22% (to two decimal places) is above the latest 12-month moving average of 3.86% (to two decimal places).

The employment-population ratio also was unchanged in August, at 60.0 percent, but is down by 0.4 percentage point over the year. (See table A-1.)

An unemployment rate of 5 per cent means that 5 per cent of the labour force is unemployed (not 5 per cent of the population). If the youth unemployment rate is 10 per cent, then 10 per cent of young persons in the labour force are unemployed, not 10 per cent of all youth.

Sign up for stock news with our Invested newsletter. Many economists, including Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members, anticipate a soft landing for the U.S. economy in 2024 that includes slowing GDP growth but no recession.

Is the job market cooling off? Job growth overall is still solid, averaging 170,000 a month since April, but that's down from 227,000 the first four months of the year and 251,000 in 2023. And aside from a handful of sectors – notably government, health care and construction – payroll gains have been feeble.

Origin. The Sahm rule originates from a chapter in the Brookings Institution's report on the use of fiscal policy to stabilize the economy during recessions. The chapter, written by Sahm, proposes fiscal policy to automatically send stabilizing payments to citizens to boost economic well-being.

What's the natural rate of unemployment? A reasonable unemployment rate is between 3% and 5%. Low unemployment means many people are receiving an income, which is good for consumer spending and the economy as a whole.

To get the simple moving average (SMA) you would divide the total sales from January – March by the number of periods, which in this case would be 3 (3 months), giving you a simple average number of sales per month. This number can be used to forecast the sales of the upcoming months or period.

Which state in US has highest employment rate? ›

In August 2024, the agriculture and related private wage and salary industry had the highest unemployment rate in the United States, at 11.3 percent. In comparison, self-employed workers, unincorporated, and unpaid family workers had the lowest unemployment rate, at 2.9 percent.

Unemployment Rate in the United States decreased to 4.20 percent in August from 4.30 percent in July of 2024. Unemployment Rate in the United States averaged 5.69 percent from 1948 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 14.90 percent in April of 2020 and a record low of 2.50 percent in May of 1953.

In 2023, Eswatini had the highest unemployment rate in the world, at 37.6 percent. Of the 10 countries with the highest unemployment rates, nine were in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The level at which unemployment equals positive output is highly debated. However, economists suggest that as the U.S. unemployment rate gets below 5%, the economy is very close to or at full capacity. So at 3.5% one could argue the level of unemployment is too low, and the U.S. economy is becoming inefficient.

Cyclical unemployment is the impact of economic recession or expansion on the total unemployment rate. Cyclical unemployment generally rises during recessions and falls during economic expansions and is a major focus of economic policy.

Demographic trends: The U.S. has an aging population, which is moving more persons out of the labor force relative to the civilian population. This has resulted in a long-term downward trend in the labor force participation rate that began around 2000, as the Baby Boomer generation began to retire.

The post-Covid economic backlash, in conjunction with faltering external economies and global conflict will directly impact US domestic interests, foreshadowing an emerging recession in the next 18 months with implications for consumers and investors both in the US and abroad.

What we covered here. The US economy added 142,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% from 4.3%, according to Friday data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's slightly below expectations, with traders and economists considering this to be the most consequential piece of data in years.

"Even though today we're not in a recession, the trajectory of the U.S. is one of a slowdown," Daco noted. "Whether payrolls, the unemployment rate, layoffs, they all point to a slowdown in employment."