June 16, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Share of families with an employed member rose in 1999

In 1999, 83.1 percent of U.S. families had at least one employed member, up 0.5 percentage point from 1998. Of the nation's 71.3 million families, 6.0 percent reported having an unemployed member, a decline of 0.4 percentage point from the previous year.

[Chart data—TXT]

Overall, 84.1 percent of married-couple families included an employed person in 1999, as did 86.3 percent of families maintained by men. Both proportions were about unchanged over the year. Among families maintained by women, a smaller proportion (77.6 percent) included an employed person; however, this proportion rose by 1.9 percentage points between 1998 and 1999.

Families in which only the husband worked comprised 19.3 percent of married-couple families, also about the same proportion as the year before. The proportion of married-couple families in which both husband and wife were employed also was little changed at 53.0 percent.

These data on families are produced by the Current Population Survey. More information can be found in Employment Characteristics of Families in 1999, news release USDL 00-172.