vs Last Month
+0.10 pts
Modest uptick — labor market continuing to soften.
The "Real" Unemployment Number
Today's U-6 Underemployment
7.80
%
+0.10 pts
vs. last month (0.00%)
Past 12 months
7.30 – 7.95
vs U-34.10%
U-6 / U-3 Ratio1.90×
2020 Peak22.90%
U-6 ticked up to 7.80% — meaning about 1 in 13 American workers is either unemployed, underemployed, or discouraged from looking. Still well below the 22.9% COVID peak, but drifting higher month-by-month.
Historical trend
Monthly U-6 rate, seasonally adjusted.
Source: FRED · U6RATE
The long view: since 1994
Three recessions and a pandemic — each leaves a clear scar.
Peak 22.90% · April 2020
Trough 6.50% · Dec 2022
Today 7.80% · May 2, 2026
How today stacks up
vs Last Year
+0.20 pts
Underemployment slowly climbing year-over-year.
5-Year Average
7.65%
Today is 15 bps above the 5-year mean.
vs Headline U-3
+3.70 pts
U-6 / U-3 ratio of 1.9× is healthy historically.
Use this number
Tools for navigating labor-market uncertainty.
About the U-6 Underemployment Rate
U-6 is the BLS's broadest measure of labor underutilization. It includes everyone counted in the headline U-3 unemployment rate (4.1% today), plus two groups U-3 leaves out: discouraged workers (people who've stopped looking because they don't believe jobs are available) and part-time-for-economic-reasons workers (people who want full-time hours but can only find part-time work). Adding those in roughly doubles the headline rate. Today's 7.80% reflects all three groups together.
Why economists watch U-6, not U-3
U-3 — the "official" unemployment rate — only counts people who are actively searching. That misses real slack in the labor market: a 55-year-old who gave up looking after six months, or a parent who took 20 hours of retail work because no 40-hour job was available. U-6 catches both. Historically, U-6 tracks at roughly 1.7–2.0× U-3 in healthy times; the multiple widens to 2.5–3× during recessions when discouragement spikes. Today's 7.80% on a 4.10% U-3 base gives a ratio of 1.90× — a healthy reading.
Reading today's number
U-6 has crept up from its December 2022 low of 6.50% as the labor market gradually loosens. The metric peaked at 22.9% in April 2020 during the COVID lockdowns — more than 1 in 5 Americans were unemployed, underemployed, or had given up looking. Today's 7.80% is meaningfully above the 2022 cycle low but still well within healthy historical range. A sustained move above 9% would warrant Fed-policy attention.
Related trackers
Other live numbers that move with — or against — this one.
Frequently asked
What this number means, and what it doesn't.
U-3 is the headline rate you see in the news — counts only people actively searching for work. U-6 adds two groups: (1) "marginally attached" workers who want jobs but stopped looking, and (2) people working part-time for economic reasons who want full-time work. U-6 is roughly 1.9× U-3 in normal conditions.
There are six total (U-1 through U-6) representing progressively broader definitions of "not fully employed." U-1 is the narrowest (only people unemployed 15+ weeks), U-6 is the broadest. Different stakeholders prefer different measures — the Fed watches U-3 and U-6; labor economists often focus on U-6 because it captures hidden slack.
Someone who wants a job and is available to work, but hasn't searched in the past 4 weeks because they believe no jobs are available in their field/area, or due to discrimination, lack of skills, or other personal reasons. They're a subset of "marginally attached" workers. They get counted in U-6 but not in U-3.
April 2020, at 22.9%. The COVID lockdowns produced the fastest, deepest labor-market shock since the 1930s. The series began in 1994; before that, BLS used a similar but slightly different framework. U-6 came down to single digits by late 2021 but the speed of recovery surprised most economists.
Same Current Population Survey that produces the U-3 rate — roughly 60,000 households each month answer detailed employment questions. The BLS classifies each respondent into one of the U-1 through U-6 categories based on their answers about job search, hours, and reasons for not working full-time.
Methodology
Source
Pulled from FRED · U6RATE and cached on the EvvyTools server.
Update schedule
Refreshed automatically by our cron whenever the upstream source publishes a new value. Historical values are not revised after publication.
How we compute
Display value is the raw published number, unrounded. Comparison stats use the closest available reference date. We never edit the underlying data.