This dashboard presents US county-level unemployment rates (1990-2019) from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS’s Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) program provides monthly and annual-average estimates of civilian labor force, employed people, unemployed people, and unemployment rates for over 7,500 unique subnational areas.
The concepts and definitions used by the BLS’s LAUS program are defined as follows:
Civilian labor force. All persons in the civilian noninstitutional population ages 16 and older classified as either employed or unemployed. (See the definitions below.)
Employed persons. These are all persons who, during the reference week (the week including the 12th day of the month), – (a) did any work as paid employees, worked in their own business or profession or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of their family, or – (b) were not working but who had jobs from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs. Each employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job.
Unemployed persons. Included are all persons who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment some time during the 4 week-period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed.
Unemployment rate. The unemployed percent of the civilian labor force [i.e., 100 times (unemployed/civilian labor force)].