US Unemployment Rate
The share of the labor force who want a job and are actively looking, but can't find one.
4.2%
Matches the latest releaseNot refreshed recently, awaiting the next release
Explore the full US economy26 live indicators on one dashboard, from growth and prices to jobs, trade and public finances. Updated automatically from official sources.Unemployment Rate
Jan 1970 to Sep 2026
Source: FRED series UNRATE · seasonally adjusted (BLS).
US Unemployment Rate in context
Worked out from the published series shown above.
In the US, the unemployment rate fell by 0.2pp over the year to Sep 2026, from 4.4% in Sep 2025.
Over the past five years it has ranged from 3.4% in Apr 2023 to 4.7% in Sep 2021.
Its average since Jan 1970 is 6.0%, and the latest reading is below that.
The US is 41st of 62 countries in our Unemployment Rate by Country ranking.
How this series is defined
Everything you need to check the figure against the source.
- Source
- BLS via FRED
- Series
- UNRATE
- Frequency
- Monthly
- Unit
- %
- Seasonal adjustment
- Seasonally adjusted
- Latest observation
- Sep 2026
- Revision status
- Latest published estimate, subject to revision
Data refreshed 2026-10-28. Figures are the latest published observations and can be revised.
More US indicators
Latest readings. Open any one for its full history.
Rankings
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