The percentage of 25-54 year-olds employed fell to 80.7% in May after reaching 80.8% in April; average hours worked fell slightly

One weakness of the unemployment rate is that if people drop out of the labor force they cannot be counted as an unemployed person and the unemployment rate goes down. They are no longer actively seeking work and it might be because they are discouraged workers. The lower unemployment rate can be misleading in this case. People dropping out of the labor force might indicate a weak labor market.

We could look at the employment to population ratio instead, since that includes those not in the labor force. But that includes everyone over 16 and that means that senior citizens are in the group but many of them have retired. The more that retire, the lower this ratio would be and that might be misleading. It would not necessarily mean the labor market is weak.

But we have this ratio for people age 25-54 (which also eliminates many college age people who might not be looking for work).

The percentage of 25-54 year olds employed was 80.7% in May and 80.8% in April. It was 80.6% in Jan. 2020 just before Covid. The 80.8% in April was the highest since the 80.8% in May, 2001. It rose 5 straight months before falling in May.

It was 80.6% in Jan. 2020 and 69.6% in April 2020.  Click here to see the BLS data. The unemployment rate was 3.7% in May after being 3.4% in April. It was 3.6% for all of  2022.  Click here to go to that data.  

60.281% of the adult population was employed in May (that is people 16 years old and older). 60.437% of the adult population was employed in April. So we had a decrease there.

Here is the timeline graph of the percentage of 25-54 year olds employed since 2013.

Now since 1948

Now hours worked. This comes from the St. Louis FED. See Average Weekly Hours of All Employees, Total Private. They were 34.4 in both Mar. and April. It was 34.3 in May.