Unemployment Rate fell in April to 3.6%.

Posted - Filed under Data News, Household Survey.

For more charts and tables at finer levels of detail, please visit our Unemployment Dataset Page.

U3 unemployment rate

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The BLS U.3 unemployment rate fell in April to 3.6% from 3.8% in March. The Labor Force Participation rate fell to 62.8% from 63%. The Employment/Population Ratio remained unchanged at 60.6%. The contribution of these two factors to the Unemployment Rate is shown in the chart below.

U3 Contributions

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The relationship between the three measures is as follows:

UR = (LR – ER) / LR

Where LR is the Labor Force Participation Rate, and ER is the Employment Ratio. Note how a decrease in the participation rate on its own, reduces the unemployment rate: The number of available workers drops, and thus there are relatively fewer unemployed – even in the absence of job growth. This is what has happened in the recovery since the “Great Recession”.

Labor Force Participation Rate

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Employment Population Ratio

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More detailed Labor Force Participation Charts and Employment Ratio Charts  
U.S. Unemployment Rate. Seasonally Adjusted.
Total Labor Force Mlns Rate (%) Monthly Change (%pts) Year/Year Change (%pts)
Apr. 2018 Apr. 2019 Apr. 2018 Feb. 2019 Mar. 2019 Apr. 2019 Feb. 2019 Mar. 2019 Apr. 2019 Feb. 2019 Mar. 2019 Apr. 2019
All Ages (16+) 161.6 162.5 3.9 3.8 3.8 3.6 -0.2 0.0 -0.2 -0.3 -0.2 -0.3
16 to 19 years 5.8 5.7 13.0 13.4 12.8 13.0 0.5 -0.6 0.2 -1.0 -0.6 0.0
20 to 24 years 15.2 15.2 6.7 7.2 7.2 6.5 -0.4 0.0 -0.7 0.4 0.5 -0.2
25 years and over 140.6 141.6 3.3 3.1 3.1 2.9 -0.2 0.0 -0.2 -0.3 -0.2 -0.4
25 to 34 years 36.7 37.0 4.4 4.0 4.0 3.9 0.1 0.0 -0.1 -0.3 -0.1 -0.5
35 to 44 years 33.6 33.8 3.0 2.6 2.8 2.7 -0.3 0.2 -0.1 -0.5 -0.4 -0.3
45 to 54 years 33.2 33.0 2.8 2.9 2.9 2.5 0.0 0.0 -0.4 0.0 0.0 -0.3
55 years and over 37.1 37.8 3.0 2.7 2.7 2.6 -0.5 0.0 -0.1 -0.5 -0.5 -0.4
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