Unemployment Rate

Share of the labor force without a job but actively seeking one; the standard labor-market slack gauge.

Specifications & Metrics

type

Lagging

frequency

Monthly

publisher

National statistical offices (U.S. Current Population Survey)

Core Principles & Analysis

• The U.S. figure comes from the Current Population Survey, a household sample running since 1940.
• Discouraged workers who stop searching drop out of both the count and the labor force, understating slack.
• Okun's law ties each point of cyclical unemployment to roughly two points of missing output.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Unemployment