These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are collected as part of the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly sample survey of approximately 60,000 households. Families include married-couple families, as well as families maintained by a man or woman with no spouse present; some families have children while others do not.
Families and Unemployment
In 2006, 4.9 million families had at least one member who was unemployed, down from 5.3 million in 2005. The proportion of black families with an unemployed member (11.4 percent) continued to be about twice that for white (5.6 percent) and Asian (5.2 percent) families. For Hispanic families, about 8.0 percent had an unemployed member. For each of these groups, the proportion of families with an unemployed member in 2006 was down from the prior year.
In families with an unemployed member, 69.6 percent also had at least one employed member in 2006, about the same as in 2005. Among married-couple families with unemployment in 2006, 82.3 percent contained an employed member. Among families maintained by men with an unemployed member, 58.3 percent had an employed member in 2006; for families headed by women, the proportion was 47.3 percent. These proportions were little changed from the prior year for
these three family types.
Families and Employment
In 2006, the proportion of all families with at least one employed member, at 82.4 percent, was about unchanged from the prior year. There was little or no change in the proportion of families with employed members among white (82.7 percent), black (78.1 percent), and Asian (89.9 percent) families. For Hispanic families, the share with an employed member edged up in 2006 to 87.2 percent.
Among married-couple families, 83.8 percent had an employed member in 2006, unchanged from 2005. For families maintained by men or women (no spouse present), the proportions with an employed member were 84.9 and 76.0 percent, respectively. Both proportions were little changed from the prior year.
The proportion of married-couple families in which only the husband worked declined to 19.8 percent in 2006 from 20.2 percent in 2005. The proportion of married-couple families in which only the wife worked remained at 6.5 percent. The proportion that were dual-worker couples (both husband and wife employed) rose from 51.3 to 51.8 percent.
Families with Children
Just under half of all families include children (sons, daughters, step-children, and adopted children) under age 18. In 2006, among the 35.6 million families with children under 18, 90.5 percent had an employed parent, up by 0.3 percentage point from 2005. The 2006 proportion was still below the most recent peak of 92.0 percent in 2000. In 2006, the mother was employed in 72.0 percent of families maintained by women, and the father was employed in 83.5 percent of those maintained by men. Among married-couple families, 97.3 percent had an employed parent in 2006, up from 97.1 percent in 2005. The proportion of married-couple families in which both parents were employed rose by 0.7 percentage point to 62.0 percent in 2006.
Mothers
The labor force participation rate for all mothers, at 70.9 percent, was little changed in 2006; it most recently peaked at 72.3 percent in
2000. The participation rate of married mothers (68.6 percent) was also about unchanged in 2006. The proportion of unmarried mothers--those who were widowed, divorced, separated, or never married--who were in the labor force in 2006 was 76.6 percent, about the same as in the prior year.
In 2006, the unemployment rate for all mothers with children under 18 declined by 0.5 percentage point to 4.8 percent. The jobless rate for
married mothers, at 3.1 percent in 2006, also fell by 0.5 percentage point over the year. The rate for unmarried mothers edged down in 2006 to 8.5 percent. For all mothers with children under 6 years, the unemployment rate decreased to 6.0 percent in 2006.
Among mothers with children younger than a year old, 56.1 percent were in the labor force in 2006, slightly higher than in the prior year. The labor force participation rate for unmarried mothers with children under a year old rose by 4.3 percentage points to 59.0 percent in 2006, while the rate for married mothers, at 55.0 percent, was about unchanged. The unemployment rate for all mothers of children under age 1 was 7.4 percent in 2006, little changed from 2005.
