August 07, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Unemployment rates in July

The number of unemployed persons was essentially unchanged at 6.4 million in July, and the unemployment rate held at 4.5 percent (seasonally adjusted). The jobless rate has been either 4.4 or 4.5 percent since April; its most recent low was 3.9 percent in October 2000.

[Chart data—TXT]

The rates for all the major worker groups—adult men (3.9 percent), adult women (3.9 percent), teenagers (14.8 percent), whites (4.0 percent), blacks (7.9 percent), and Hispanics (6.0 percent)—showed little or no change over the month.

About 1.2 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in July, about the same as a year earlier. These were people who wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

These data are a product of the Current Population Survey. Find out more in "The Employment Situation: July 2001," news release USDL 01-245.