page_title: Unemployment in the United States
section_title: U.S. employment history
hierarchical_section_title: Unemployment in the United States / U.S. employment history
caption_attribution_description: English: Job growth by U.S. President, measured as cumulative percentage change from month after inauguration to end of term.
context_page_description: Unemployment in the United States discusses the causes and measures of U.S. unemployment and strategies for reducing it. Job creation and unemployment are affected by factors such as economic conditions, global competition, education, automation, and demographics. These factors can affect the number of workers, the duration of unemployment, and wage levels.
context_section_description: During the 1940s, the U.S Department of Labor, specifically the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), began collecting employment information via monthly household surveys. Other data series are available back to 1912. The unemployment rate has varied from as low as 1% during World War I to as high as 25% during the Great Depression. More recently, it reached notable peaks of 10.8% in November 1982 and 14.7% in April 2020. Unemployment tends to rise during recessions and fall during expansions. From 1948 to 2015, unemployment averaged about 5.8%. There is always some unemployment, with persons changing jobs and new entrants to the labor force searching for jobs. This is referred to as frictional unemployment. For this reason, the Federal Reserve targets the natural rate of unemployment or NAIRU, which was around 5% in 2015.  A rate of unemployment below this level would be consistent with rising inflation in theory, as a shortage of workers would bid wages (and thus prices) upward.
caption: Job Growth by U.S. President, measured as a cumulative percentage change from month after inauguration to end of term.
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