Unemployment and the American Family

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its annual report looking at how unemployment in the United States has impacted the American family unit in 2013.

Interestingly, if you look at the data a little more closely, you'll find that the BLS divides employment into two categories; full-time meaning that a family member works at a job for at least 35 hours per week and those who work less than full-time hours.  While 80 percent of families have at least one family member employed, only 72.2 percent of families have at least one worker employed at a full time job.

1.) Of the 80.4 million families in the United States, 80 percent or 64.318 million families had at least one employed family member.  By race and in order from greatest to least, the percentage of families with at least one employed family member are:

Asian: 88.8 percent

Hispanic: 85.1 percent

White: 80.1 percent

Black: 75.7 percent

In total, 20 percent of families had no family member employed during 2013, the same level as in 2012 showing that job growth is just keeping up to growth in the number of families.  Among white families, 19.9 percent had no family member employed during 2013 compared to black families where 24.3 percent had no family member employed during 2013, 11.2 percent for Asian families and 14.9 percent for Hispanic families.  Interestingly, if you look at the data a little more closely, you'll find that the BLS divides employment into two categories; full-time meaning that a family member works at a job or jobs for at least 35 hours per week and those who work less than full-time hours.  While 80 percent of all families have at least one family member employed, only 72.2 percent of families have at least one worker employed at a full-time job, the same level seen in 2012.  Among white families, 72.5 percent had at least one family member employed full-time compared to only 66.3 percent of black families, 82.8 percent for Asian families and 76.9 percent of Hispanic families.

2.) The proportion of all families, regardless of race, with an unemployed family member decreased to 9.6 percent in 2013 from 10.5 percent in 2012.  By race, the proportion of families with an unemployed family member are:

Asian: 7.8 percent

White: 8.5 percent

Hispanic: 12.9 percent

Black: 16.0 percent

If we go back two years to 2011, 11.5 percent of families had an unemployed family member, down from 12.4 percent in 2010 where 18.9 percent of black families had an unemployed family member.

3.) The number of families with at least one unemployed member decreased from 8.4 million in 2012 to 7.7 million in 2013.  If we go back to 2010 and 2011, respectively, 9.7 million and 9.0 million families had at least one unemployed member so we can see that there has been substantial improvement compared to the dark days that followed the Great Recession.

4.) In 2013, only 73.3 percent of families that were headed by women with no spouse present had an employed family member compared to 81.5 percent of married-couple families and 81.7 percent of families headed by men with no spouse present.  Among married-couple families with children, 96.3 percent had an employed parent during 2013.  Among married-couple families with children, both parents worked in 59.1 percent of the cases.

5.) The labor force participation rate for mothers with children under the age of 18 was 69.9 percent in 2013, down from 70.8 percent in 2010.  The labor force participation rate for mothers with children under the age of 6 was 63.9 percent compared to 74.7 percent for those whose youngest child was between 6 and 17 years of age.  Interestingly, the unemployment rate of married mothers was only 4.8 percent compared to 12.0 percent for mothers with a status other than married.

While we are on the topic, let's close with a look at the labor force participation rate for both women and men:

The labor force participation rate for women peaked in 2000 at 60.3 percent and has since fallen to 57.2 percent, a drop of 5.1 percent.

Here's the same graph for men:

The labor force participation rate for men peaked in October 1949 at 87.4 percent and has since fallen to its current level of 69.9 percent, a drop of 20 percent.  It is the workers that have given up on finding a job that have been the saving grace of the monthly headline unemployment picture and the reason why the employment picture for America families doesn't look as bad as it should or could.

These statistics verify what Main Street America is experiencing.  While there have been gains in employment, there are still a substantial number of American families that are experiencing unemployment and, of even more concern, underemployment.  The economy is creating jobs; they just aren't the jobs that people need to get ahead.