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 rose in May to 5.5% from 5.4% in April.

The Labor Force Participation rate rose to 62.9% from 62.8%.

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

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)
May
2014
May
2015
May
2014
Mar.
2015
Apr.
2015
May
2015
Mar.
2015
Apr.
2015
May
2015
Mar.
2015
Apr.
2015
May
2015
All Ages (16+) 155.6 157.5 6.3 5.5 5.4 5.5 0.0 -0.1 0.1 -1.1 -0.8 -0.8
16 to 19 years 5.6 5.8 19.2 17.5 17.1 17.9 0.4 -0.4 0.8 -3.4 -2.0 -1.3
20 to 24 years 15.7 15.6 11.1 10.4 9.6 10.1 0.4 -0.8 0.5 -1.8 -1.0 -1.0
25 years and over 134.3 135.9 5.2 4.4 4.5 4.5 -0.1 0.1 0.0 -1.0 -0.7 -0.7
25 to 34 years 34.0 34.8 6.6 5.6 5.8 5.8 0.2 0.2 0.0 -1.2 -0.8 -0.8
35 to 44 years 32.5 32.5 5.1 4.1 4.3 4.4 -0.4 0.2 0.1 -1.0 -0.5 -0.7
45 to 54 years 34.1 34.0 4.5 3.7 3.8 3.9 -0.1 0.1 0.1 -1.1 -0.8 -0.6
55 years and over 33.8 34.7 4.5 3.9 4.0 3.7 -0.4 0.1 -0.3 -0.8 -0.6 -0.8
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