From News Desk
Photo courtesy – Dylan-Gillis/Unsplash
The percentage of American workers who are ‘functionally unemployed’ continues to hover around the 25% mark with continued signs of weakness in the labour market, according to the latest report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP).
LISEP’s True Rate of Unemployment (TRU) measures the functionally unemployed, defined as the jobless plus those seeking but unable to find full-time employment, or those earning poverty wages (capped at USD 26,000 a year in 2025 dollars). Due to the federal government shutdown and the resulting suspension of labour data collection by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS), no household survey employment data were released for October; and the release of the November TRU was delayed.
LISEP’s TRU was 24.8% for November, down 0.1 percentage points from September and 0.7 percentage points higher than November 2024. This compares to a federal government jobless rate of 4.6%, the highest level since September 2021.
By demographic, the TRU remains higher for Black and Hispanic workers (28.1% and 27%, respectively) than for White workers, whose TRU was 23.3%. From September to November, the TRU rose by 0.4 percentage points for Black workers, while it fell by 0.5 percentage points for Hispanic workers and declined by 0.3 percentage points for White workers.
“With the official unemployment rate at its highest level since 2021 and functional unemployment remaining elevated, many households are feeling the effects of a labour market that has grown less forgiving,” LISEP Chair Gene Ludwig said. “Stagnant wages and elevated prices for basic necessities continue to stretch household budgets, pressures that tend to be felt most acutely during the holiday season.”
Women continue to face worse employment outcomes than men, with the TRU for women increasing 0.3 points to 30.1%. Meanwhile the TRU for men dropped 0.3 percentage points, to 20.2%. In contrast, the unemployment rate for women was 4.5% compared to 4.6% for men in November.
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