April 21, 2004 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Families and unemployment, 2003

In 2003, 8.1 percent of families had an unemployed member, an increase of 0.3 percentage point from the prior year. This was the third consecutive year this measure rose.

[Chart data—TXT]

In an average week in 2003, 6.1 million families had at least one unemployed member, up from 5.8 million families the year before. The proportion of black families with an unemployed member (13.7 percent) was higher than the proportion of white families (7.1 percent), Asian families (9.4 percent), and Hispanic families (11.1 percent).

Of the 6.1 million families with at least one unemployed member, 70.5 percent also had an employed family member. Asian families with unemployment were most likely to have at least one member employed (82.7 percent), followed by white families (73.6 percent), Hispanic families (70.1 percent), and black families (57.3 percent).

These estimates are based on annual average data from the Current Population Survey. See Employment Characteristics of Families in 2003 (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 04-719, for more information. Data for 2003 reflect revised population controls used in the Current Population Survey. Estimates for the above race groups (white, black or African American, and Asian) do not sum to totals because data are not presented for all races. In addition, persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race and, therefore, are classified by ethnicity as well as by race.