July 10, 2003 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Families and unemployment, 2002

In 2002, 7.8 percent of the nation's families had an unemployed member, up from 6.6 percent the year before. This was the second consecutive increase in this proportion.

[Chart data—TXT]

In an average week in 2002, 5.8 million families had at least one member who was unemployed, an increase of 962,000 families from 2001. The proportion of families with an unemployed member was higher for black families (13.1 percent) than for either white families (7.0 percent) or Hispanic families (11.2 percent). For all three groups, the proportion of families with an unemployed person was higher than in 2001.

These estimates are based on annual average data from the Current Population Survey, a national sample survey of about 60,000 households conducted monthly for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau. See the Employment Characteristics of families in 2002 (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 03-369, for more information. Data for 2001 have been revised to reflect the introduction of Census 2000-based population controls. Detail for the above race and Hispanic-origin groups will not sum to totals because data for the "other races" group are not presented and Hispanics are included in both the white and black population groups.

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