2024 Employment Characteristics of Families — 2025-04-23

In 2024, 5.3 percent of families included an unemployed person, up from 4.8 percent in 2023, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Of the nation's 84.3 million families, 80.1 percent had at least one employed member in 2024. These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of about 60,000 households. Data in this news release are annual averages. Families are classified either as married-couple families or as families maintained by women or men without spouses present. Unless otherwise noted, families include those with and without children under age 18. For further information, see the Technical Note in this news release. In 2024, the number of families with at least one unemployed family member increased by 485,000 to 4.5 million. The proportion of families with an unemployed person increased by 0.5 percentage point from the prior year to 5.3 percent.