Unemployment Rate in the United States

Unemployment Rate (Economics Term) in the Federal Budget Process

Meaning of Unemployment Rate in the congressional and executive budget processes (GAO source): As defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of people who do not have jobs but have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks and are currently available for work, expressed as a percentage of the civilian labor force.

Legal Materials

U.S. unemployment figures are published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The BLS posts a database of national unemployment data covering 1948 to the present. More detailed information is available in the Labor Force Statistics tables.

To find out the current unemployment rate in a particular U.S. state or city, you can go straight to the Economy At A Glance page of the BLS web site. For more information, see the Local Area Unemployment Statistics.

You can find more national, and state-specific and international data by following the “Unemployment” link in the left navigation column of the Overview of BLS Statistics page. Unemployment data is also published, along with other economic indicators, inBarron’s and other business journals.

Resources

See Also

• Federal Appropriations
• Entries about the United States Budget Process in the Encyclopedia (including Unemployment Rate)
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Economic Data
• Statistics
• Economics
• Labor Statistics

Further Reading

• Legislatures and the budget process: the myth of fiscal control(J Wehner, 2010)
• Reconcilable Differences?: Congress, the Budget Process, and the Deficit (JB Gilmour, 1990)
• Fiscal institutions and fiscal performance(JM Poterba, J von Hagen, 2008)