1998 Employment Characteristics of Families — 1999-05-25

In 1998, the proportion of U.S. families with at least one employed member was 82.6 percent, up 0.5 percentage point from 1997, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Of the nation's 70.2 million families, 6.4 percent reported having an unemployed member, a decline of 0.6 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. Changes in the levels and percents shown in the text of this release reflect the effect of revised estimation procedures and, therefore, may not agree with changes calculated directly from data in the attached tables. (See box note at end of text.) For further information about the CPS, see the Technical Note. In an average week in 1998, 4.5 million families had at least one member who was unemployed, a decline of 394,000 from 1997.