JobMarketHealth

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

CPS: Current Population Survey: unemployment by occupation

The Current Population Survey is the monthly household survey behind the national unemployment rate. BLS publishes annual-average unemployment rates by occupation, which show how easily people in a line of work are finding jobs.

Used in the scoreAnnual averages table from the monthly household survey

What it measures

  • Unemployment rates for people whose last job was in a given occupation, as annual averages
  • Detailed occupations where the sample supports them, and broader major groups otherwise

What it does not measure

Most misreadings of labor data come from asking a dataset a question it was not built to answer. These are the limits worth holding onto.

  • Openings or hiring demand directly
  • State or metro conditions for an occupation. The table used here is national
  • Precise rates for small occupations, where survey error is large

Update cadence

Annual averages table from the monthly household survey.

Occupation pages name the specific release behind each figure and when it was imported, so you can see how current a number is rather than assuming it is new. More on that on about the data.

How JobMarketHealth uses it

  • Score input: the occupation's unemployment rate, ranked so that lower unemployment reads as tighter, is the labor tightness measure, 40% of the Occupation Fundamentals component.
  • Where BLS does not publish a detailed rate, the occupation's major-group rate is used and the page discloses that it is a broader proxy.

Where it sits

This dataset feeds the composite score. The weighting of each component is set out on the methodology page. Read the methodology.

Official source

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes Current Population Survey: unemployment by occupation. JobMarketHealth organizes and derives from that public data and is not its publisher.

BLS notice

Statistics on this site are retrieved from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, including through its public data services. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov. BLS does not sponsor or endorse JobMarketHealth, and our derivation and interpretation are our own. More in the data and career disclaimer.

BLS CPS table: unemployed persons by occupation

Related guides

  • How to tell if a job market is healthyHealthy is not the same as large or well paid. It means employers are actively adding people, separations are not spiking, and the occupation has room to keep hiring.

Ready to look at an occupation? Search occupations to see the score, wage context and outlook for a specific job.