EMPLOYMENT RATES

June 4, 2019

Employment rates indicate the percent of the working age population that did any work for pay, including self-employment. Employment rates are a more comprehensive measure of labor market conditions than official “unemployment” rates, because they not only reveal the share of the population that are unemployed but also those who are no longer in the labor force at all — many of whom are “discouraged workers.”^[i] Employment rates by race and gender suggest the extent to which structural economic changes have benefited different groups. While trends in employment rates tend to shift slowly, they can change dramatically in times of disaster, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, before resettling to pre-disaster trends. The data in these graphs are prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.