Story Highlights
- P2P in U.S. up to highest rate since October 2012
- Unemployment edges down to 6.0%
- Workforce participation up to 67.1%
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U.S. Payroll to Population employment rate (P2P), as measured by Â鶹´«Ã½AV, was 45.5% in June. This is up one full percentage point from the previous month, and 0.5 points higher than the rate measured in June 2014. This development represents the strongest month-to-month change for P2P since May 2014, and continues the rise seen last month.
P2P is now at the highest it has been since October 2012, which in turn was the highest point in Â鶹´«Ã½AV's five-year trend on this measure. This increase in the summer months is in line with an expected seasonal rise in full-time employment.
Â鶹´«Ã½AV's P2P metric tracks the percentage of the U.S. adult population aged 18 and older who are working for an employer for at least 30 hours per week. P2P is not seasonally adjusted. The latest results are based on Â鶹´«Ã½AV Daily tracking interviews with 28,355 Americans, conducted June 1-29 by landline telephone and cellphone. Â鶹´«Ã½AV does not count adults who are self-employed, work fewer than 30 hours per week, are unemployed or are out of the workforce as payroll-employed in the P2P metric.
Overall, P2P is an important measure of the health of the economy; P2P tracks closely with other objective measures of economic productivity such as , as well as with subjective measures such as life evaluations and physical .
Workforce Participation at 67.1% in June
The percentage of U.S. adults participating in the workforce in June was 67.1%. This is up from May, and is the highest rate since September 2014 by 0.1 points. However, it is still 0.3 points lower than the rate measured in June 2014, 67.4%. Since May 2010, the workforce participation rate has remained in a range encompassing a low of 65.8% and a high of 68.5%, although in the past two years it has most often remained below 67.0%. Workforce participation measures the percentage of adults aged 18 and older who are working, or who are not working but are actively looking for work and are available for employment.
Unemployment Steady at 6.0%
Â鶹´«Ã½AV's unadjusted U.S. unemployment rate is at 6.0% in June, down slightly from May (6.1%), and except for one reading of 5.8% in December 2014, is the lowest in Â鶹´«Ã½AV's five-year trend. Â鶹´«Ã½AV's U.S. unemployment rate represents the percentage of adults in the workforce who did not have any paid work in the past seven days, for an employer or themselves, and who were actively looking for and available to work.
Unlike Â鶹´«Ã½AV's P2P rate, which is a percentage of the total population, the unemployment rates that Â鶹´«Ã½AV and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report are percentages within the labor force. While both Â鶹´«Ã½AV and BLS data are based on surveys with very large sample sizes, the two have important methodological differences -- outlined at the end of this article. Additionally, the most-discussed unemployment rate released by the BLS each month is seasonally adjusted, while Â鶹´«Ã½AV reports unadjusted numbers. Although Â鶹´«Ã½AV's employment numbers strongly correlate with BLS rates, the BLS and Â鶹´«Ã½AV estimates of unemployment do not always track precisely on a monthly basis.
Underemployment Unchanged at 14.7%
Â鶹´«Ã½AV's measure of underemployment in June is 14.7%, unchanged from May, and both months' readings represent the lowest level recorded since Â鶹´«Ã½AV began tracking it daily in 2010. Â鶹´«Ã½AV's U.S. underemployment rate combines the percentage of adults in the workforce who are unemployed (6.0%) and those who are working part time but desire full-time work (8.7%). The percentage of the workforce in this latter category has varied between 8.4% and 10.1% since January 2010.
Bottom Line
Full-time employment for an employer continues to increase through the first month of summer, after a slow start in 2015. It is now at its highest measurement since 2012. Underemployment remained at the lowest rate Â鶹´«Ã½AV has measured in the five-year history of the trend, after reaching this level in May. One component of that measure -- unemployment -- is now as low as Â鶹´«Ã½AV has measured it with the exception of one lower reading in December 2014. Additionally, in May 2015, Â鶹´«Ã½AV's reached the highest point since its inception in January 2008.
Despite these positive signs for the strength of the U.S. labor market, Americans' enthusiasm about the economy as measured by Â鶹´«Ã½AV's has been trending down, not up, in recent months, although confidence is higher than it was in the years following the financial meltdown in 2008.
The data in this article are available in .
Â鶹´«Ã½AV.com reports results from these indexes in daily, weekly, and monthly averages and in Â鶹´«Ã½AV.com stories. Complete trend data are always available to view and export in the following charts:
Daily: , ,
Weekly: , , ,
about Â鶹´«Ã½AV's economic measures.
our economic release schedule.
Survey Methods
Results for this Â鶹´«Ã½AV poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 1-29, 2015, on the Â鶹´«Ã½AV U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 28,355 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±1 percentage point at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting.
Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
Learn more about how the works.
