August 01, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Midwesterners are most likely to be on the job

The proportion of the population with jobs was the highest in the Midwest in 1999.

[Chart data—TXT]

Among Midwesterners, 67.3 percent of the population was employed on average in 1999. The percentages for the other three regions were clustered within a narrow range: 64.3 percent of those in the West were employed, 63.2 percent in the South, and 62.5 percent in the Northeast.

In the nation as a whole, 64.3 percent of the population had jobs.

These data on employment are a product of the Current Population Survey. Additional information is available from Geographic Profile of Employment and Unemployment, 1999 (PDF 994K) (BLS Bulletin 2537).