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 June to 5.3% from 5.5% in May.

The Labor Force Participation rate fell to 62.6% from 62.9%.

The Employment/Population Ratio fell to 59.3% from 59.4%.

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.
TotalLabor Force MlnsRate (%)Monthly Change (%pts)Year/Year Change (%pts)
June
2014
June
2015
June
2014
Apr.
2015
May
2015
June
2015
Apr.
2015
May
2015
June
2015
Apr.
2015
May
2015
June
2015
All Ages (16+) 155.7 157.0 6.1 5.4 5.5 5.3 -0.1 0.1 -0.2 -0.8 -0.8 -0.8
16 to 19 years 5.6 5.7 20.7 17.1 17.9 18.1 -0.4 0.8 0.2 -2.0 -1.3 -2.6
20 to 24 years 15.6 15.6 10.6 9.6 10.1 9.9 -0.8 0.5 -0.2 -1.0 -1.0 -0.7
25 years and over 134.6 135.8 4.9 4.5 4.5 4.2 0.1 0.0 -0.3 -0.7 -0.7 -0.7
25 to 34 years 34.2 34.7 6.5 5.8 5.8 5.6 0.2 0.0 -0.2 -0.8 -0.8 -0.9
35 to 44 years 32.5 32.6 4.6 4.3 4.4 3.9 0.2 0.1 -0.5 -0.5 -0.7 -0.7
45 to 54 years 34.1 33.8 4.2 3.8 3.9 3.5 0.1 0.1 -0.4 -0.8 -0.6 -0.7
55 years and over 33.8 34.7 4.4 4.0 3.7 3.7 0.1 -0.3 0.0 -0.6 -0.8 -0.7
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