2000 Employment Characteristics of Families — 2001-04-19

In 2000, 83.2 percent of U.S. families had at least one employed member, about unchanged from 1999, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Of the nation's 71.7 million families, 5.7 percent reported having an unemployed member, a decline of 0.3 percentage point from the previous year. These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 50,000 households. Families include married-couple families, as well as families maintained by a man or a woman with no spouse present. For further information about the CPS, see the Technical Note. In an average week in 2000, 4.1 million families had at least one member who was unemployed. Of these families, 72.3 percent also contained at least one employed family member.