U.S. Number of Unemployed People

## What this measures

How many people in the United States had no job, were available for work and had looked for one in the past four weeks, in thousands, seasonally adjusted. It is the count behind the unemployment rate.

## Why it matters

Set beside job openings it shows how tight the labor market is: when there are more openings than unemployed people, workers have the upper hand and wages tend to rise faster.

## How to read it

Read the direction over several months. A rise of several hundred thousand from its low has historically come with recessions. Compare with job openings (fred_jolts), which is also counted in thousands.

## What it does not say

It leaves out people who have given up looking and part-time workers who want more hours. It is a survey estimate with a margin of error of a couple of hundred thousand in a month.

## Source

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, series LNS13000000 (FRED id UNEMPLOY). Palanor pulls it from the FRED API (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) nightly. Bureau of Labor Statistics data are in the public domain.