Unemployment rate
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · monthly · 944 observations
725th highest of 944 months since Jan 1948 (tied with 27 months; BLS LNS14000000, computed from our CSV; Oct 2025 not collected).
+0.1 pp vs prior month−0.2 pp vs a year earlier
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
About this series
What it measures
The share of people in the labor force who do not have a job but are available and looked for one in the past four weeks. It comes from a monthly survey of households.
Why it matters
It is the most familiar summary of how hard it is to find work.
Common misreads
People who stop looking are not counted as unemployed, so the rate can fall when people give up. Small monthly moves are often within the survey's sampling error. The 1994 CPS redesign and January population-control adjustments create breaks, so very old and recent readings are not perfectly comparable. October 2025 was not collected (2025 lapse in appropriations).