Unemployment is not distributed evenly across the U.S. population. Figure 2 shows unemployment rates broken down in various ways: by gender, age, and race/ethnicity.

Figure 2. Unemployment Rate by Demographic Group. (a) By gender, 1972–2012. Unemployment rates for men used to be lower than unemployment rates for women, but in recent decades, the two rates have been very close, often with the unemployment rate for men somewhat higher. (b) By age, 1972–2012. Unemployment rates are highest for the very young and become lower with age. (c) By race and ethnicity, 1972–2012. Although unemployment rates for all groups tend to rise and fall together, the unemployment rate for whites has been lower than the unemployment rate for Blacks and Hispanics in recent decades. (Source: www.census.gov/bls).

The unemployment rate for women had historically tended to be higher than the unemployment rate for men, perhaps reflecting the historical pattern that women were seen as “secondary” earners. By about 1980, however, the unemployment rate for women was essentially the same as that for men, as shown in 2(a). During the recession of 2008–2009, however, the unemployment rate climbed higher for men than for women.

Figure 3. While women had historically more affected by unemployment, there is very little gender unemployment gap today.

Younger workers tend to have higher unemployment, while middle-aged workers tend to have lower unemployment, probably because the middle-aged workers feel the responsibility of needing to have a job more heavily, in addition to having more experience. Younger workers move in and out of jobs (and in and out of the labor force) more easily. Elderly workers have extremely low rates of unemployment, because those who do not have jobs often exit the labor force by retiring, and thus are not counted in the unemployment statistics. Figure 2(b) shows unemployment rates for women divided by age; the pattern for men is similar.

The unemployment rate for African-Americans is substantially higher than the rate for other racial or ethnic groups, a fact that surely reflects, to some extent, a pattern of discrimination that has constrained Blacks’ labor market opportunities. However, the gaps between unemployment rates for whites and for Blacks and Hispanics diminished in the 1990s, as shown in Figure 3(c). In fact, unemployment rates for Blacks and Hispanics were at the lowest levels for several decades in the mid-2000s before rising during the Great Recession of 2008.

Finally, those with less education typically suffer higher unemployment. In early 2013, for example, the unemployment rate for those with a college degree was 3.7%; for those with some college but not a four-year degree, the unemployment rate was 6.0%; for high school graduates with no additional degree, the unemployment rate was 7.6%; and for those without a high school diploma, the unemployment rate was 10.3%. This pattern may arise because additional education offers better connections to the labor market and higher demand, or it may occur because the labor market opportunities for low-skilled workers are less attractive than the opportunities for the more highly-skilled. Because of lower pay, low-skilled workers may be less motivated to find jobs.

Thinking about Unemployment

We cannot rely on unemployment statistics to provide a clear picture of total unemployment in the United States. First, unemployment statistics do not take into account underemployment, a state in which a person accepts a lower paying, lower status job than their education and experience qualifies them to perform. Second, unemployment statistics only count those:

1. who are actively looking for work
2. who have not earned income from a job in the past four weeks
3. who are ready, willing, and able to work

The unemployment statistics provided by the U.S. government are rarely accurate, because many of the unemployed become discouraged and stop looking for work. Not only that, but these statistics undercount the youngest and oldest workers, the chronically unemployed (e.g., homeless), and seasonal and migrant workers.

A certain amount of unemployment is a direct result of the relative inflexibility of the labor market, considered structural unemployment, which describes when there is a societal level of disjuncture between people seeking jobs and the available jobs. This mismatch can be geographic (they are hiring in California, but most unemployed live in Alabama), technological (skilled workers are replaced by machines, as in the auto industry), or can result from any sudden change in the types of jobs people are seeking versus the types of companies that are hiring.

Because of the high standard of living in the United States, many people are working at full-time jobs but are still poor by the standards of relative poverty. They are the working poor. The United States has a higher percentage of working poor than many other developed countries (Brady, Fullerton and Cross 2010). In terms of employment, the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the working poor as those who have spent at least 27 weeks working or looking for work, and yet remain below the poverty line. Many of the facts about the working poor are as expected: Those who work only part time are more likely to be classified as working poor than those with full-time employment; higher levels of education lead to less likelihood of being among the working poor; gender and race impact ones odds of being in this group and those with children under 18 are four times more likely than those without children to fall into this category. In 2016, the working poor rate, which is the the ratio of the working poor to all individuals in the labor force for at lest 27 weeks or more, was 4.9  percent, or 7.6 million Americans, down from 2015. In that same year women were more likely than men to be among the working poor. The rate for Blacks and Hispanics were 8.7 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively, compared with 4.3 percent for whites and 3.5 percent for Asians (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2016).

Figure 4. Women are disproportionately represented in the working-poor, especially Black and Hispanic women.

MillenNials and Poverty

Millennials, or Americans born between 1982 and 2000, now number 83.1 million and represent more than one quarter of the nation’s population. Young adults today are marrying at lower rates than previous generations, and self-reports suggest that a lack of economic security including wages, poverty, and housing (e.g., housing costs and living arrangements) are all associated with lower marriage rates among young adults. ^[3]. According to Pew Research (2017) more millennial households are in poverty than households headed by any other generation. In 2016, of the approximate 17 million U.S. household living in poverty, 5.3 million were headed by a millennial.^[4]\

Figure 5. Millennials face greater rates of poverty when compared with other generations.

Most developed countries such as the United States protect their citizens from extreme poverty by providing different levels of social services such as unemployment insurance, welfare, food assistance, and so on. They may also provide job training and retraining so that people can reenter the job market. In the past, the elderly were particularly vulnerable to falling into poverty after they stopped working; however, pensions, retirement plans, and Social Security were designed to help prevent this. A major concern in the United States is the rising number of young people growing up in poverty. Growing up poor can cut off access to the education and services people need to move out of poverty and into stable employment. As we saw, more education was often a key to stability, and those raised in poverty are the ones least able to find well-paying work, perpetuating a cycle.

Another notion important to sociologists and citizens is the expense of being poor. In a practical sense, people with more money on hand, better credit, a more stable income, and reliable insurance can purchase items or services in different ways than people who lack those things. For example, someone with a higher income can pay bills more reliably, as well as have more credit extended to them through credit cards or loans. When it comes time for those people to purchase a car, for example, they can likely negotiate a lower monthly payment or less money down. In an even more simplistic situation, people with more spending money can buy groceries in bulk, spending far less per unit than those who must purchase smaller portions. The single greatest expense for most adults is housing; beyond its significant portion of a family’s expenses, housing drives many other costs, such as transportation (how close does someone live to the places they need to go), childcare, and other areas. And people in poverty pay significantly more for their housing than others – sometimes 70-80 percent of their total income. Those with fewer resources are also more likely to rent rather than own, so they do not build credit in the same way, nor do they have the opportunity to sell the property later and utilize their equity (Nobles 2019).

The ways that governments, organizations, individuals, and society as a whole help the poor are matters of significant debate, informed by extensive study. Sociologists and other professionals contribute to these conversations and provide evidence of the impacts of these circumstances and interventions to change them. The decisions made on these issues have a profound effect on working in the United States.