Labor market
The US Labor Market is one of two components of the Federal Reserve's Dual Mandate of Maximum employment and Price stability. This is typically measured by using the U3 or Headline Unemployment rate which measures the number of unemployed workers in the economy who are actively seeking employment. But, this measure has some limitations, which leads to the need to use broader labor market measures to measure the overall health of the labor market. It's very important to discuss the U3 Headline rate, as well as the U6 rate, which provides a broader view of the economy. Beyond that, there are a number of other measures, which provide insight into different parts of the economy. How many of these are discussed depends on which ones are interesting in a particular time period and what point you're trying to make. In approximately declining order of importance, I'll list what I recommend looking into here:
- U3 Headline rate
- U6 rate (more inclusive)
- Month-to-month change in number of jobs
- Long term unemployment
- Expectations of unemployment rate, from the Survey of Professional Forecasters or another forecasting service
- Gap between U3 and U6 rates (this can be seen indirectly by, for example, the graph below, but it doesn't hurt to show it specifically)
- Real wages/wage growth
- Beveridge Curve
- Employment growth by sector (i.e. manufacturing, finance, etc)
Broader measures of the labor market include:
But these are not the only measures...