June 1, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Fewer families experienced unemployment in 1998

Of the Nation’s 70.2 million families, 6.4 percent reported having an unemployed member in 1998. This was a decline of 0.6 percentage point from 1997. In absolute terms, the number of families with an unemployed member in an average week fell by 394,000.

[Chart data—TXT]

The share of families with an unemployed member was higher among blacks and Hispanics than among whites in both years. Black families experienced the largest drop in unemployment between 1997 and 1998, from 13.3 percent of families to 11.8 percent.

Of the 4.5 million families with an unemployed member in 1998, 3.2 million also had at least one member employed. At 70.6 percent, the share of families with an unemployed member that also contained at least one employed member rose 0.5 percentage point from 1997.

These data on employment, unemployment, and family relationships are from the Current Population Survey. Find out more in "Employment characteristics of families in 1998," News release USDL 99-146.