U-3 and U-6 unemployment by state, 2015

During 2015, the unemployment rate for the nation as a whole averaged 5.3 percent. In any month, this was the percentage of the labor force who were unemployed. People are counted as unemployed if they:

• did not work for pay during the week that included the 12th
• had actively looked for work during the preceding 4 weeks or were waiting to be called back from a temporary layoff
• could have started a job if they had received an offer.

The annual average jobless rate varied by state. The states with the lowest unemployment rates, all under 4.0 percent in 2015, were North Dakota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Iowa, Utah, Vermont, Hawaii, Minnesota, and Colorado.

The highest unemployment rates during 2015 were in Nevada, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, New Mexico, Alaska, Mississippi, California, Louisiana, Alabama, Arizona, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. All had rates of 5.9 percent or higher.

The unemployment rate is also known as U-3. In addition to U-3, BLS publishes an alternative measure of labor underutilization known as U-6. The U-6 measure includes

• unemployed people from U-3
• people who are "marginally attached" to the labor force, that is those who are neither working nor looking for work but want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months
• people who work part time for economic reasons, who would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they could not find a full-time job.

During 2015, the U-6 rate for the nation averaged 10.4 percent.

For the most part, states with U-3 rates lower than the national U-3 rate also had U-6 rates lower than the national U-6 rate. Similarly, states with high U-3 rates generally had high U-6 rates. 

The national U-6 rate (10.4 percent) was about 2 times the national U-3 rate (5.3 percent) in 2015. The lowest U-6 to U-3 ratios were in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Louisiana, New Jersey, West Virginia, Mississippi, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Alaska, and Arkansas. In these states the U-6 rate was less than 1.84 times the U-3 rate, indicating a relatively smaller number of marginally attached workers or people working part time for economic reasons.

In contrast, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Vermont, Nebraska, Maine, Montana, Virginia, Minnesota, Arizona, Florida, and Michigan all had ratios of U-6 to U-3 larger than 2.11. These states had a relatively larger number of marginally attached workers or people working part time for economic reasons.

These data from the Current Population Survey are issued by the Local Area Unemployment Statistics program. To learn more, see Alternative Measures of Labor Underutilization for States. A chart of the most recent Alternative measures of labor underutilization for the nation is one of the Charts related to The Employment Situation news release.