Who are the employed, unemployed, or discouraged?

Why is support for job seekers still a priority, given the 3.0% unemployment rate in Wisconsin? Despite the high rate of employment, Wisconsin residents continue to ask their libraries for help finding good jobs. Several factors driving this demand were highlighted by Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development and Workforce Development Boards at a recent meeting of the Libraries Activating Workforce Development Skills (LAWDS) Super Project Advisory Council.  

Wisconsin’s unemployment rate does not accurately reflect the following factors, which bring people to the library looking for help:

• The number of Wisconsin residents who are “discouraged” and no longer actively seeking jobs
• The number of Wisconsinites who may be working more than one job to meet monthly expenses, or are working one job, but seeking to earn a higher salary
• The underemployment of people with disabilities and veterans
• The number of Wisconsin businesses and start-ups unable to attract as many employees as they need to meet their business goals

To understand the true employment needs of Wisconsin residents, it helps to dig into the definitions of employment, unemployment, and other Labor Force Characteristics measured by the Current Population Survey conducted monthly by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The unemployment rate does not correspond to the number of people who received unemployment benefits during the month. The BLS website, as of September 9, 2019, describes labor market participation rates as follows:

The employed did any work for pay or profit during the survey reference week; did at least 15 hours of unpaid work in a family-operated enterprise; were temporarily absent from their regular jobs because of illness, vacation, bad weather, industrial dispute, or various personal reasons.

The unemployed do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, are currently available for work, or were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been temporarily laid off.

Those not in the labor force are neither employed nor unemployed (as defined above) and include retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work.

Discouraged workers are part of the group described as “marginally attached workers” who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Among the marginally attached, discouraged workers were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them or there were none for which they would qualify.

While these different measures can seem confusing, an understanding of the labor needs of Wisconsin residents is helpful in planning services to address job-seeking needs.

Next month, I’ll augment this primer on the ways that labor market participation rates are measured with information on ways libraries can address the challenges of veterans, persons with disabilities and discouraged workers.