2006 Employment Characteristics of Families — 2007-05-09

In 2006, the share of families with an unemployed member declined to 6.4 percent from 7.0 percent in the prior year, the Bureau of Labor Sta- tistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. The proportion of families with an unemployed member has declined each year since 2003, when it was 8.1 percent. Of the nation�s 77.0 million families, 82.4 percent had at least one employed member in 2006, essentially unchanged from 2005. These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of approximately 60,000 households. Families include married-couple families, as well as families maintained by a man or woman with no spouse present; some families have children while others do not. For further information about the CPS, see the Technical Note. In 2006, 4.9 million families had at least one member who was unemployed, down from 5.3 million in 2005.