Over the last few months, some have expressed concern over mild softening in certain labor market measures. For instance, after hitting a low of 3.4% in 2023, the unemployment rate slowly crept back up to 4.0% in May 2024. Ideally, unemployment would remain as low as possible, but unemployment has now been at or below 4.0% for 30 months running—the longest such stretch since the late 1960s. To put some of this in perspective, I’ve made a few comparisons with pre-pandemic unemployment and employment rates to show just how well today’s labor market stacks up. Spoiler: Even while some measures have softened a bit from peaks in 2022 and 2023, the overall picture remains stronger than what we saw in 2019. 

Figure A compares unemployment rates today with those in 2019, overall and for select demographic groups. Because of volatility in the household survey, I’ve created 12-month averages for comparison: calendar year 2019 in the dark blue bar and the June 2023 to May 2024 average in the light blue bar.

Unemployment rates today are comparable to 2019. Sustained low unemployment over the last 2.5 years has disproportionately benefited Black workers who have lower unemployment now than in 2019, leading to a slow narrowing of the persistent Black-white unemployment gap. Hispanic workers experience lower unemployment than Black workers in general, but their rates are now slightly above their 2019 level. Young adults are experiencing similar unemployment as before the pandemic. 

Figure B displays the employment-to-population (EPOP) ratio for prime-age adults for select demographic groups. This age group is key to analyze because it is less influenced by the aging population or increases in college attendance. Overall, the share of the 25- to 54-year-old population with a job increased from 80.0% to 80.7% between 2019 and 2024. The prime-age EPOP for women hit an all-time high in 2024 and has averaged 75.2% over the last year, 1.5 percentage points higher than in 2019. Similarly, prime-age Black and Hispanic workers hit historically high employment rates in the last year.  

All these indicators point to a strong (but decidedly not overheated) labor market. On Friday, I will pay particular attention to these trends across demographic groups.