1. Measures of Employment

2. What agency measures the unemployment rate?

3. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

4. Who gets classified as employed?

5. The BLS classifies people with jobs as employed. People are considered employed if they did any work at all for pay during the week in which a Current Population Survey “household survey” was conducted.

6. Who gets classified as being in the labor force?

7. To be counted as in the labor force, individuals must be aged 16 years and over. They must also have a job or be actively looking for a job.

8. How is the unemployment rate calculated?

9. The unemployment rate equals the total number of unemployed persons divided by the total number of people in the labor force. BLS calls this the U-3 rate.

10. Are there other BLS measures of unemployment?

11. Discouraged workers have given a job-market related reason to BLS for not currently looking for work. An example would be that they can’t find any jobs. BLS adds discouraged workers to their U-3 numbers for a second measure of unemployment called U-4.