2004 Employment Characteristics of Families — 2005-06-09

In 2004, 7.4 percent of families had an unemployed member, a decline of 0.7 percentage point from 2003, the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today. Of the nation's 75.9 million families, 82.3 percent had an employed member in 2004, up by 0.3 percentage point from a year earlier. These changes reflect an improving labor market. These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 households nationwide. Families include married- couple families, as well as those maintained by a man or a woman with no spouse present. For further information on the CPS, see the Technical Note. In an average week in 2004, 5.6 million families had at least one unemployed member, down from 6.1 million families in 2003.