Historical U.S. Unemployment Rate by Year
By Markets & Investing DeskUpdated Nov 10, 2026
Key takeaways
- The unemployment rate is the share of the labor force that has no job, is available to work and is actively looking for work.
- Unemployment is countercyclical: it rises in recessions and falls in expansions, usually with a lag.
- The headline rate does not count people who have stopped looking for work, so it can fall even when job prospects are not improving.
Current Values
The unemployment rate during the Great Depression peaked at 24.9% in 1933, the highest annual rate in U.S. history. Roughly one in four people in the labor force had no job and was looking for one. The rate stayed above 14% every year from 1931 through 1940 and fell below 5% only in 1942, after defense spending for World War II absorbed idle workers.
These Depression figures are estimates that economists built later, so they are not measured the same way as modern data. The civilian unemployment rate published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and carried by FRED begins in 1948, and the historical table above gives it as annual averages from that year onward.
How the Unemployment Rate Is Measured
The calculation itself is simple:
Unemployment rate = Unemployed ÷ Labor force × 100
where the labor force = Employed + Unemployed.
Hypothetical example: if a country has 160 million employed people and 8 million unemployed people, the labor force is 168 million. The unemployment rate is 8 ÷ 168 × 100, or about 4.8%. People who are neither working nor looking for work (retirees, full-time students, people caring for family members) fall outside both numbers.
The BLS collects the inputs through the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of about 60,000 households run with the Census Bureau. Interviewers ask what each household member did during a specific reference week: whether they worked and, if not, whether they were available and looking for a job. The BLS estimates national totals from the sample and publishes the previous month’s rate, usually on the first Friday of the following month, in its Employment Situation report.
Who Counts as Unemployed
To be counted as unemployed, a person must meet all three conditions:
- Had no paid work during the reference week.
- Was available to start work.
- Actively searched for a job at some point in the prior four weeks, or was on temporary layoff waiting to be recalled.
Collecting unemployment insurance is not part of the definition. Someone can be unemployed in the survey without ever filing a claim, and the rate does not come from claims data.
The Headline Rate and Broader Measures
The rate widely quoted in the news is the BLS measure known as U-3. The broadest standard alternative, U-6, adds two groups. The first is marginally attached workers who want a job and searched in the past year but not in the past four weeks, including discouraged workers who believe no jobs are available. The second is people working part time who want full-time hours. U-6 always runs higher than U-3 because it counts more people as underused.
A separate figure, the labor force participation rate, is the share of the civilian population age 16 and older that is in the labor force at all. The unemployment rate shows how many people in the labor force cannot find work; the participation rate shows how many are in the labor force to begin with.
Reading the Historical Table
Each row in the table is a calendar-year average of the twelve monthly readings. Averaging smooths out short spikes, which matters for years with sharp turns. The table shows 8.1% for 2020, but the monthly rate jumped from about 3.5% in February to 14.8% in April before falling back. A year-average figure, a December figure and a peak-month figure for the same year are three different numbers, and comparisons only work when they use the same basis.
The other columns add context:
- Inflation is the annual change in consumer prices. Setting it beside unemployment shows periods when both were high at once, such as the 1970s.
- Real GDP growth is inflation-adjusted output growth for the year.
- Business cycle labels each year as a whole. Official U.S. recession dates, set by the National Bureau of Economic Research, are monthly and do not line up with calendar years. The 2007 to 2009 recession ran from December 2007 to June 2009, yet the table labels 2008 an expansion year alongside real GDP growth of 0.1%. Treat the label as a summary of the year, not a recession date.
Unemployment During the Great Depression
| Year | Unemployment rate | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1929 | 3.2% | Stock market crash in October |
| 1930 | 8.7% | Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act |
| 1931 | 15.9% | Bank failures spread; Dust Bowl drought |
| 1932 | 23.6% | Revenue Act raised tax rates |
| 1933 | 24.9% | Peak; New Deal begins |
| 1934 | 21.7% | Recovery starts |
| 1935 | 20.1% | |
| 1936 | 16.9% | |
| 1937 | 14.3% | Federal spending cuts; renewed downturn |
| 1938 | 19.0% | Fair Labor Standards Act sets a federal minimum wage |
| 1939 | 17.2% | War begins in Europe |
| 1940 | 14.6% | Peacetime draft |
| 1941 | 9.9% | Pearl Harbor |
| 1942 | 4.7% | Defense spending surges |
| 1943 | 1.9% | |
| 1944 | 1.2% | Lowest annual rate on record |
| 1945 | 1.9% | War ends |
Two patterns stand out. First, the climb was fast. The rate rose from 3.2% to over 20% in three years as output, prices and bank lending collapsed together. Second, the recovery was slow and uneven. Unemployment improved each year from 1934 to 1937, then jumped back to 19% during the 1937 to 1938 recession, when fiscal and monetary policy tightened while the economy was still weak. Full employment arrived only with wartime production and the military draft, which together pulled millions of people into jobs and out of the civilian labor force.
How Depression-Era Figures Were Estimated
The United States had no monthly household labor survey when the Depression began. A national sample survey started in 1940 and evolved into the CPS, and the rates for 1929 to 1939 were reconstructed afterward from census counts, employment records and other sources. The standard series also counts people in federal emergency relief jobs, such as the Works Progress Administration, as unemployed. Alternative estimates that count them as employed show lower rates for the mid-1930s. Either way, the early 1930s remain the worst stretch of joblessness in the country’s history.
Highest and Lowest Unemployment in U.S. History
Highest: 24.9% in 1933, on an annual basis. In the monthly series since 1948, the record is 14.8% in April 2020, when pandemic shutdowns caused mass temporary layoffs. Before 2020, the post-World War II high was 10.8% in late 1982.
Lowest: 1.2% in 1944, on an annual basis, during full wartime mobilization. In the monthly series since 1948, the low is 2.5% in May 1953, near the end of the Korean War.
Unemployment Across Recessions and Expansions
Unemployment moves opposite to economic activity. When demand for goods and services falls, businesses need fewer workers or cannot afford to keep them, so layoffs rise and hiring slows. When demand recovers, firms need more labor and the rate falls.
The turns are rarely immediate. In a downturn, employers often cut hours, freeze hiring or reduce pay before laying people off, so unemployment usually keeps rising after output falls and often peaks after a recession has officially ended. In a recovery, firms tend to push existing staff harder before adding headcount. After the recession ended in June 2009, the monthly rate peaked at 10.0% in October 2009, and the annual rate peaked at 9.6% in 2010 even as real GDP returned to growth. The rate then took until 2015 to fall back near its pre-crisis range.
Several postwar episodes show how different these cycles can be:
- 1970s stagflation. Unemployment and inflation rose together, breaking the earlier expectation that one would fall when the other rose. After the 1973 to 1975 recession, the annual rate reached 8.5% in 1975.
- Early 1980s. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates sharply to break inflation, and back-to-back recessions followed.
- 1990s. After the 1990 to 1991 recession, the annual rate peaked at 7.5% in 1992. A long expansion then brought it down to about 4% by 2000.
- 2008 to 2010. The financial crisis pushed the annual average from 4.6% in 2007 to 9.3% in 2009.
- 2020. The pandemic spike was the sharpest on record, but it also reversed unusually fast because many layoffs were temporary.
What Drives the Unemployment Rate
Economists group unemployment into three types, and each responds to different forces:
- Frictional unemployment is the normal time people spend between jobs or entering the workforce. It exists even in strong economies.
- Structural unemployment comes from mismatches between workers’ skills or locations and the jobs available, for example when an industry declines in one region.
- Cyclical unemployment rises and falls with the business cycle. It is the part behind most of the swings in the table.
Because frictional and structural unemployment never disappear, the rate does not go to zero even at full employment. Economists use the idea of a natural rate of unemployment for the level consistent with stable inflation. It cannot be observed directly and is estimated with a margin of error.
Policy affects mainly the cyclical part. The Employment Act of 1946 made maximum employment a federal economic goal, a direct response to the Depression. Since a 1977 amendment to the Federal Reserve Act, the Fed has had a dual mandate of maximum employment and stable prices. Lower interest rates support borrowing, spending and hiring, while higher rates cool demand and can raise unemployment, as in 1981 and 1982. Fiscal policy works through government spending and taxes. Supply-side policies, such as training programs, aim at structural unemployment instead.
Major events can overwhelm everything else. Wars raised military spending and output, pulling unemployment down during World War II and the Korean War. Pandemics, financial panics and energy shocks pushed it up.
Demographics and participation shift the rate as well. When large numbers of people join the labor force, as women and baby boomers did from the 1960s to the 1980s, the rate can rise temporarily while they look for work. Discouraged workers who stop searching leave the labor force, which lowers the rate without anyone finding a job.
Limits of the Data
- It comes from a sample. CPS estimates carry sampling error. A month-to-month change of a tenth of a percentage point is usually not statistically meaningful.
- It is seasonally adjusted. The headline monthly series removes regular seasonal patterns, such as holiday hiring and summer jobs for students. Unadjusted figures can look quite different.
- It is revised. Seasonal factors are recalculated each year, and population controls are updated, so historical monthly values can shift slightly.
- It ignores job quality. A person working a few hours a week counts as employed, and the rate says nothing about wages or hours.
- It changes with definitions. The survey has been redesigned several times, most notably in 1994, so very fine comparisons across decades, and especially with the 1930s estimates, deserve caution.
Historical Data
| Year | Unemployment (avg) | Inflation | Real GDP growth | Business cycle |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 4.2% | 3.7% | — | |
| 2025 | 4.3% | 2.6% | 2.3% | Expansion |
| 2024 | 4.0% | 2.9% | 3.0% | Expansion |
| 2023 | 3.6% | 3.3% | 2.9% | Expansion |
| 2022 | 3.7% | 6.4% | 2.4% | Expansion |
| 2021 | 5.4% | 7.2% | 6.3% | Expansion |
| 2020 | 8.1% | 1.3% | −2.1% | Contraction |
| 2019 | 3.7% | 2.3% | 2.6% | Expansion |
| 2018 | 3.9% | 2.0% | 3.0% | Expansion |
| 2017 | 4.4% | 2.1% | 2.5% | Expansion |
| 2016 | 4.9% | 2.0% | 1.8% | Expansion |
| 2015 | 5.3% | 0.6% | 2.9% | Expansion |
| 2014 | 6.2% | 0.7% | 2.5% | Expansion |
| 2013 | 7.4% | 1.5% | 2.1% | Expansion |
| 2012 | 8.1% | 1.8% | 2.3% | Expansion |
| 2011 | 8.9% | 3.1% | 1.6% | Expansion |
| 2010 | 9.6% | 1.4% | 2.7% | Expansion |
| 2009 | 9.3% | 2.8% | −2.6% | Contraction |
| 2008 | 5.8% | −0.0% | 0.1% | Expansion |
| 2007 | 4.6% | 4.1% | 2.0% | Expansion |
| 2006 | 4.6% | 2.5% | 2.8% | Expansion |
| 2005 | 5.1% | 3.3% | 3.5% | Expansion |
| 2004 | 5.5% | 3.3% | 3.8% | Expansion |
| 2003 | 6.0% | 2.0% | 2.8% | Expansion |
| 2002 | 5.8% | 2.5% | 1.7% | Expansion |
| 2001 | 4.7% | 1.6% | 1.0% | Expansion |
| 2000 | 4.0% | 3.4% | 4.1% | Expansion |
| 1999 | 4.2% | 2.7% | 4.8% | Expansion |
| 1998 | 4.5% | 1.6% | 4.5% | Expansion |
| 1997 | 4.9% | 1.7% | 4.4% | Expansion |
| 1996 | 5.4% | 3.4% | 3.8% | Expansion |
| 1995 | 5.6% | 2.5% | 2.7% | Expansion |
| 1994 | 6.1% | 2.6% | 4.0% | Expansion |
| 1993 | 6.9% | 2.8% | 2.7% | Expansion |
| 1992 | 7.5% | 3.0% | 3.5% | Expansion |
| 1991 | 6.8% | 3.0% | −0.1% | Contraction |
| 1990 | 5.6% | 6.3% | 1.9% | Expansion |
| 1989 | 5.3% | 4.6% | 3.7% | Expansion |
| 1988 | 5.5% | 4.4% | 4.2% | Expansion |
| 1987 | 6.2% | 4.3% | 3.5% | Expansion |
| 1986 | 7.0% | 1.2% | 3.5% | Expansion |
| 1985 | 7.2% | 3.8% | 4.2% | Expansion |
| 1984 | 7.5% | 4.0% | 7.2% | Expansion |
| 1983 | 9.6% | 3.8% | 4.6% | Expansion |
| 1982 | 9.7% | 3.8% | −1.8% | Contraction |
| 1981 | 7.6% | 8.9% | 2.5% | Expansion |
| 1980 | 7.2% | 12.3% | −0.3% | Contraction |
| 1979 | 5.9% | 13.3% | 3.2% | Expansion |
| 1978 | 6.1% | 9.0% | 5.5% | Expansion |
| 1977 | 7.1% | 6.7% | 4.6% | Expansion |
| 1976 | 7.7% | 5.0% | 5.4% | Expansion |
| 1975 | 8.5% | 7.1% | −0.2% | Contraction |
| 1974 | 5.6% | 12.1% | −0.5% | Contraction |
| 1973 | 4.9% | 8.9% | 5.6% | Expansion |
| 1972 | 5.6% | 3.4% | 5.3% | Expansion |
| 1971 | 6.0% | 3.3% | 3.3% | Expansion |
| 1970 | 5.0% | 5.6% | 0.2% | Expansion |
| 1969 | 3.5% | 5.9% | 3.1% | Expansion |
| 1968 | 3.6% | 4.7% | 4.9% | Expansion |
| 1967 | 3.8% | 3.3% | 2.7% | Expansion |
| 1966 | 3.8% | 3.4% | 6.6% | Expansion |
| 1965 | 4.5% | 1.9% | 6.5% | Expansion |
| 1964 | 5.2% | 1.2% | 5.8% | Expansion |
| 1963 | 5.6% | 1.6% | 4.4% | Expansion |
| 1962 | 5.6% | 1.2% | 6.1% | Expansion |
| 1961 | 6.7% | 0.7% | 2.6% | Expansion |
| 1960 | 5.5% | 1.4% | 2.6% | Expansion |
| 1959 | 5.5% | 1.5% | 6.9% | Expansion |
| 1958 | 6.8% | 1.8% | −0.7% | Contraction |
| 1957 | 4.3% | 3.0% | 2.1% | Expansion |
| 1956 | 4.1% | 2.8% | 2.1% | Expansion |
| 1955 | 4.4% | 0.4% | 7.1% | Expansion |
| 1954 | 5.6% | −0.4% | −0.6% | Contraction |
| 1953 | 2.9% | 0.6% | 4.7% | Expansion |
| 1952 | 3.0% | 0.9% | 4.1% | Expansion |
| 1951 | 3.3% | 6.0% | 8.0% | Expansion |
| 1950 | 5.2% | 5.8% | 8.7% | Expansion |
| 1949 | 6.0% | −1.8% | −0.6% | Contraction |
| 1948 | 3.8% | 2.7% | 4.1% | Expansion |
FAQs
What were the unemployment rate and inflation rate in 1972 and in 1976?
Annual average unemployment was 5.6% in 1972 and 7.7% in 1976. Consumer price inflation, measured as the annual-average change in the CPI-U, was about 3.2% in 1972 and about 5.8% in 1976. Unemployment rose over those four years, mainly because of the 1973 to 1975 recession, and inflation was higher at the end of the period than at the start.
Was unemployment high from 1978 to 1980?
It was moderate, then rising. Annual unemployment was about 6.1% in 1978, 5.8% in 1979 and 7.1% in 1980, the year a recession began. What made the period stand out was the combination: inflation climbed into double digits at the same time.
What was the unemployment rate in 2008?
The annual average was 5.8%, up from 4.6% in 2007. The monthly rate rose throughout the year as the financial crisis deepened, from about 5% in January to over 7% by December.
The Bottom Line
Anyone comparing jobless rates across years, from students of the Depression to readers tracking recent recessions, needs to check the basis of each number. Annual averages, single months and peak readings differ, and 1930s estimates were rebuilt later using different methods. Pair the headline U-3 rate with U-6 and the participation rate, since the rate can fall when discouraged workers stop looking.
