November 15, 2000 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Experience of unemployment continues to decline

The number of individuals who experienced some unemployment during the year continued to decline. About 13 million individuals were in this category in 1999, down about 1 million from 1998.

[Chart data—TXT]

Roughly 149 million persons worked or looked for work at some time in 1999. Thus, the 13.1 million who experienced some unemployment during the year represented a "work-experience unemployment rate" of 8.8 percent. This rate was 0.8 percentage point lower than in 1998 and the lowest since the series began in 1958.

The "work-experience unemployment rate" for blacks, 12.6 percent, was higher than the rate for either Hispanics (11.3 percent) or whites (8.2 percent). Rates decreased for most of the various worker groups over the year. 

These data are from the March Supplement to the Current Population Survey. Learn more in "Work Experience of the Population in 1999," news release USDL 00-333.