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The nation’s unemployment rate is widely recognized as a key indicator of labor market performance. As a way to help assess labor market conditions from several perspectives, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes five alternative measures of labor underutilization every month.
Two of these measures (U-1 and U-2) are more restrictive than the official unemployment rate, and three (U-4, U-5, and U-6) are broader, incorporating individuals who are not captured in the official measure.
While the alternative measures differ in magnitude from the official unemployment rate, they typically show very similar movements over the course of the business cycle. Between May 2007 and May 2008, for example, all of the alternative rates rose, as did the official rate.
These data are from the Current Population Survey program and are seasonally adjusted. See below for definitions of U-1 to U-6.To learn more, see "The Unemployment Rate and Beyond: Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization" (PDF), Issues in Labor Statistics, summary 08-06, June 2008.
Definitions of U-1 to U-6:
Terms used in definitions: Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, The Economics Daily, The unemployment rate and beyond at https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2008/jul/wk1/art05.htm (visited November 11, 2024).