Maps: Comparing the Unemployment Measures

This series of maps shows the 4 highest unemployment measures for December 2013:

• U3 -the official unemployment rate
• U4 -U3 plus discouraged workers
• U5 -U4 plus marginally employed workers
• U6 -U5 plus part-time workers unable to find full-time jobs

You can see more discussion of the six measures of unemployment here.

 U4:  The addition of discouraged workers who have not looked for a job in the past 4 weeks because of the lack of jobs pops Nevada's unemployment rate to over 10%.

U5:  Marginally employed workers are those who report they would like a job but are not looking.  If the jobs market was better, they report they would look for work.

U6:  This is the highest measure of unemployment computed by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.  In December 2013 Nevada led the country in unemployment with a figure of 18.1% on U6.  In other words, almost 1 in 5 workers in Nevada cannot find a full-time job.