United States: Unemployment rate (BLS)
Unemployed people aged 16 and over as a percentage of the civilian labour force, seasonally adjusted (BLS Current Population Survey, FRED UNRATE).
Official statisticSource figures as of October 16, 2026Sources & methods
- Period covered
- Jan 1948 – Sep 2026
- Source figures as of
- October 16, 2026
- Geography
- United States
- Sector
- Whole economy (not a single sector)
- Seasonal adjustment
- Seasonally adjusted
- Transformations
- Views other than the level (changes, averages, volatility) are calculated by CK Economics from these figures
- Revisions
- Replaced with the source’s latest figures whenever it revises them.
- Data status
- Current
Key figures
CK estimate% of labour force · calculated by CK Economics from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data
- Latest · Sep 2026
- 4.2
- −0.2 pp vs a year earlier1
- 5-year change
- −0.5 pp
- since Sep 20212
- 10-year change
- −0.8 pp
- since Sep 20162
- Record high
- 14.8
- Apr 20203
- Record low
- 2.5
- May 1953 (and 1 other period)3
- Where the latest ranks
- 20th pct.
- Higher than 20% of the other 943 observations since Jan 19484
- 1Latest observation against the observation one year earlier (for weekly data, the nearest within three days).
- 2Latest observation against the observation five and ten years earlier.
- 3Highest and lowest published observations across the full history shown.
- 4Share of the other published observations that are lower than the latest one, rounded down.
Methodology
Unemployed people aged 16 and over as a percentage of the civilian labour force, seasonally adjusted (BLS Current Population Survey, FRED UNRATE). U.S. official statistics as republished by FRED. FRED does not give a publication date without an API key, so a value's date is the day CK Economics first saw it. Source series UNRATE. Licence: Public domain (U.S. government works).
Source
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Federal Reserve Board, via FRED, FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED, retrieved 2026-10-19). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE
All data
| Period | Value | Change y/y |
|---|---|---|
| Sep 2026 | 4.2 | −0.2 pp |
| Aug 2026 | 4.1 | −0.2 pp |
| Jul 2026 | 4.1 | −0.2 pp |
| Jun 2026 | 4.2 | +0.1 pp |
| May 2026 | 4.3 | 0 pp |
| Apr 2026 | 4.3 | +0.1 pp |
| Mar 2026 | 4.3 | +0.1 pp |
| Feb 2026 | 4.4 | +0.2 pp |
| Jan 2026 | 4.3 | +0.3 pp |
| Dec 2025 | 4.4 | +0.3 pp |
| Nov 2025 | 4.5 | +0.3 pp |
| Sep 2025 | 4.4 | +0.3 pp |
| Aug 2025 | 4.3 | +0.1 pp |
| Jul 2025 | 4.3 | +0.1 pp |
| Jun 2025 | 4.1 | 0 pp |
| May 2025 | 4.3 | +0.4 pp |
| Apr 2025 | 4.2 | +0.3 pp |
| Mar 2025 | 4.2 | +0.3 pp |
| Feb 2025 | 4.2 | +0.3 pp |
| Jan 2025 | 4 | +0.3 pp |
| Dec 2024 | 4.1 | +0.3 pp |
| Nov 2024 | 4.2 | +0.5 pp |
| Oct 2024 | 4.1 | +0.2 pp |
| Sep 2024 | 4.1 | +0.4 pp |