Families and unemployment, 2006

May 15, 2007

In 2006, the share of families with an unemployed member declined to 6.4 percent from 7.0 percent in the prior year.

[Chart data—TXT]

The proportion of black families with an unemployed member (11.4 percent) continued to be about twice that for white (5.6 percent) and Asian (5.2 percent) families. For Hispanic families, about 8.0 percent had an unemployed member.

For each of these groups, the proportion of families with an unemployed member in 2006 was down from the prior year.

In 2006, 4.9 million families had at least one member who was unemployed, down from 5.3 million in 2005.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. To learn more, see "Employment Characteristics of Families in 2006" (PDF) (TXT), USDL news release 07-0673.