US Unemployment by Age

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Description

This dataset provides unemployment figures by area and age group. Data is available by month from January 2010 through the latest month available in the version selected. Data is available at the national, state, MSA, and county levels. Unemployment is provided in both numbers and percentages, and is not seasonally adjusted.

When requesting an MSA code as the area constraint in a query, the code must be prepended by MSA (e.g. for MSA code 10540, use 'MSA10540').

The BLS definitions for many of our metrics can be found at the BLS unemployment FAQ.

Our twelve month averages are a less volatile metric to measure employment and unemployment, and are made by averaging the current month of employment/unemployment data with the previous eleven months' data.

Use Cases

Questions answered by this dataset:

• What is the current unemployment for people under age 22 in California? In Idaho?
• Which age group in the nation had the highest unemployment change from January to April 2020?
• How has the unemployment rate changed in Oregon for people aged 45-54 in 2020?
• Which age group makes up the largest share of the labor force?

Metrics

• Employment: The number of employed people in the area.
• Unemployment: The number of unemployed people in the area.
• TwelveMonthEmpAverage: The average of the last 12 months' employment.
• TwelveMonthAverage: The average of the last 12 months' unemployment.
• LaborForce: The number of employed and unemployed people in the area.
• UnemploymentRate: Unemployment divided by the LaborForce.

Filters

• Area (Nation, State, MSA, County)
• Age (9 age groups)
• Year
• Month

Core LMI Metadata