Current Population Survey · Unemployment rates of private wage and salary workers by industry, not seasonally adjusted
What is the US unemployment rate in each industry?
The month ended : of the 14 lines, the change over a year was largest for Education and health services, up 0.3 percentage points, and smallest for Mining, down 5.9 percentage points.
Unemployment rate by industry, goods and farming, each month
- Mining0.90.3 to 19.3
- Construction3.53.1 to 16.6
- Manufacturing2.91.8 to 13.2
- Durable goods2.61.8 to 15.1
- Nondurable goods3.41.8 to 10.2
- Agriculture2.82.8 to 14.1
Unemployment rate by industry, trade, transport, information, finance, each month
- Wholesale and retail trade4.03.3 to 17.1
- Transportation and utilities4.22.6 to 14.2
- Information7.11.4 to 12.3
- Financial activities2.01.3 to 5.7
Unemployment rate by industry, business, health, leisure, other, each month
- Professional and business services3.92.9 to 9.8
- Education and health services3.61.9 to 10.9
- Leisure and hospitality6.64.5 to 39.3
- Other services3.62.1 to 23.0
Each row is one line of the page over the last ten years, one month to a point, on a scale shared by the rows of the tab, with its newest value and its range printed beside it and a dashed line at zero. A gap is a month with no value. Pointing at the chart shows the month and the value.
Observed .
Right now
Over a year to September 2026, of the 14 lines on this page the change was largest for Education and health services, up 0.3 percentage points, and smallest for Mining, down 5.9 percentage points.
Of these lines, 3 rose, 10 fell and 1 did not change over the year (ours, from the published values).
By lineOver a year, ours
Unemployment rate by industry, change over a year, by line
- Goods and farming
- Trade, transport, information, finance
- Business, health, leisure, other
Each bar is the change in one line over a year, the largest first, with its rank at the left and its newest value under the figure. A line with its own page links it from its name. A change below zero runs to the left of the zero line. The colour says which section of the page a line is in.
Observed .
Unemployment rate by industry, change over a year in each month
| Line | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mining | – | +7.1 | +1.6 | −0.1 | +0.7 | +3.3 | +0.3 | −2.4 | +4.6 | −0.4 | −1.0 | −5.9 |
| Construction | – | −0.5 | −0.2 | +0.6 | −0.3 | +1.3 | −1.8 | +0.6 | +1.3 | +0.3 | −0.1 | −0.3 |
| Manufacturing | – | −0.1 | −0.4 | −0.5 | +0.6 | +0.3 | −0.3 | −0.5 | +0.1 | −1.3 | −0.5 | −0.8 |
| Durable goods | – | −0.9 | −0.6 | −0.2 | +0.5 | +0.4 | −0.4 | −1.3 | 0.0 | −1.3 | −0.1 | −1.0 |
| Nondurable goods | – | +1.3 | +0.2 | −0.9 | +0.6 | 0.0 | +0.1 | +0.9 | +0.4 | −1.6 | −0.7 | −0.6 |
| Agriculture | – | +7.9 | −1.5 | +1.5 | +1.2 | +1.5 | −1.2 | −1.6 | −2.9 | +0.3 | −1.6 | −4.2 |
| Wholesale and retail trade | – | +0.8 | +0.2 | +0.4 | +0.6 | −0.3 | +0.7 | −0.9 | −1.3 | +0.1 | −0.3 | −0.8 |
| Transportation and utilities | – | +0.1 | −0.3 | +0.9 | +0.4 | −1.0 | +0.4 | −0.5 | −0.2 | +0.8 | −1.2 | +0.3 |
| Information | – | +2.7 | +1.0 | −0.7 | −1.0 | −1.4 | −0.8 | −0.6 | +1.1 | +1.2 | +1.2 | +0.1 |
| Financial activities | – | −0.3 | −0.1 | +0.1 | +0.1 | 0.0 | −0.2 | −0.5 | +0.1 | +0.3 | +1.2 | −0.3 |
| Professional and business services | – | +0.2 | +0.5 | −0.3 | −0.3 | −0.1 | +0.5 | +0.3 | +0.2 | +0.3 | −0.4 | 0.0 |
| Education and health services | – | 0.0 | 0.0 | +0.6 | +0.1 | +0.3 | +0.3 | +0.8 | +0.5 | +0.2 | +0.1 | +0.3 |
| Leisure and hospitality | – | −0.3 | +0.7 | −0.9 | −0.3 | 0.0 | 0.0 | −0.6 | −0.6 | −0.7 | +0.2 | −0.1 |
| Other services | – | +0.8 | −0.1 | −0.3 | +0.3 | −0.5 | 0.0 | +1.3 | +0.7 | −1.1 | −0.6 | −0.1 |
Each chip is one month's change from the same month a year earlier. The mark in its middle is zero: a fill to the right of it is a rise and a fill to the left a fall. A longer, brighter fill is a larger change, in five steps up to 1.5 and over. Every chip prints its figure and sign. A dash is a month with no figure.
Observed .
Understanding unemployment by industry
Where it stands today
The largest change over a year was Education and health services, up 0.3 percentage points, in September 2026.
What do the lines of this page measure?
These are the unemployment rates of workers in the industries BLS prints in its table: mining, construction, manufacturing with its durable and nondurable goods (which are parts of manufacturing), agriculture, wholesale and retail trade, transportation and utilities, information, financial activities, professional and business services, education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and other services. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) estimates them each month from the Current Population Survey, a survey of households, and publishes them, not seasonally adjusted, in the Employment Situation report (table A-14).
Read more
An unemployed person is placed in the industry of the last job, and each rate is a share of that industry's labor force: the people employed in it plus the unemployed who last worked in it. The rates are for wage and salary workers of private employers, so government workers and the self-employed are in the class of worker page.
What 500metrics adds: the change over a year of every line, ranked across the page; the last ten years of every line as rows of small charts; and a table of the change over a year in each of the last twelve months. Every line has a page of its own with the history since the series begins.
The numbers behind the chart
What is the latest value of each line?14 lines, in the sections of the page
| Line | Section | Month | Value | Change over a year | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mining | Goods and farming | 0.9% | −5.9 pts | 14 | |
| Construction | Goods and farming | 3.5% | −0.3 pts | 7 | |
| Manufacturing | Goods and farming | 2.9% | −0.8 pts | 10 | |
| Durable goods | Goods and farming | 2.6% | −1.0 pts | 12 | |
| Nondurable goods | Goods and farming | 3.4% | −0.6 pts | 9 | |
| Agriculture | Goods and farming | 2.8% | −4.2 pts | 13 | |
| Wholesale and retail trade | Trade, transport, information, finance | 4.0% | −0.8 pts | 10 | |
| Transportation and utilities | Trade, transport, information, finance | 4.2% | +0.3 pts | 1 | |
| Information | Trade, transport, information, finance | 7.1% | +0.1 pts | 3 | |
| Financial activities | Trade, transport, information, finance | 2.0% | −0.3 pts | 7 | |
| Professional and business services | Business, health, leisure, other | 3.9% | 0.0 pts | 4 | |
| Education and health services | Business, health, leisure, other | 3.6% | +0.3 pts | 1 | |
| Leisure and hospitality | Business, health, leisure, other | 6.6% | −0.1 pts | 5 | |
| Other services | Business, health, leisure, other | 3.6% | −0.1 pts | 5 |
The table scrolls sideways; the first column stays in place.
What do these figures leave out, and how are they cited?Limits, dates and how to cite
What this number cannot tell you
- These rates are not seasonally adjusted: compare a month with the same month a year before, not with the month before. The rates move with the seasons, and BLS does not remove that movement from these series.
- Every rate comes from a survey of households, so each month's value carries sampling error, and the error is larger for a small group. BLS's technical note in the Employment Situation gives its size.
- Each rate is a share of its own industry's labor force, and the rate of a whole is not the sum of the rates of its parts. Durable goods and nondurable goods are the two parts of manufacturing, and the rank of the change over a year counts manufacturing and its two parts together as separate lines. The BLS file holds more detailed industries that this page does not show.
- People who have never worked are in no industry, so the rates do not describe the first-time job seekers.
- October 2025 has no value because BLS did not collect the survey that month; the charts show a gap there, and the change over a year for October 2026 has no value because there is no October 2025 to compare with.
- The changes and the ranks are ours, worked out from the values BLS publishes; a change is in percentage points.
Observed . Checked .
How to cite this
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey, Unemployment rates of private wage and salary workers by industry, not seasonally adjusted, through September 2026. Compiled by 500metrics, "What is the US unemployment rate in each industry?", https://500metrics.com/unemployment-by-industry.
Can the data be downloaded?unemployment-by-industry.csv
Download the last ten years of every line as CSV: 1,680 rows, to , 109,825 bytes.
Our text and compilation: CC BY 4.0.
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