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Americans experience unemployment in different ways and at different rates, depending on their age, gender, education level, and race or ethnicity. The monthly BLS unemployment report sheds light on all of these differences. For the month of April 2010, the unemployment rate for teenaged workers, ages 16 to 19, was a whopping 25.4 percent. This implied that for every four teenagers who were counted in the labor force (meaning they were either employed or looking for a job), only three were able to find work. For adults age 20 and older, unemployment was far lower, at a little over 9 percent.

Gender disparities in unemployment are much smaller than disparities by age. For most of the 2000-2010 decade, there was no consistent difference between men's and women's jobless rates. That changed near the end of the decade, however, as the economy fell into recession. More jobs were lost in male-dominated occupations, like construction and manufacturing, than in the rest of the economy, causing men's unemployment to rise faster than women's. In April 2010, the rate for all men age 16 and older stood at 10.8 percent, compared to 8.8 percent for women. If teenaged workers were excluded, the rates were 10.1 and 8.2 percent for men and women, respectively.

Education strongly influences one's chances of being unemployed. More highly educated Americans experience less joblessness than those with fewer educational credentials. The April 2010 figures were illustrative. Among workers aged 25 or older, those lacking a high school diploma had a 14.7 percent unemployment rate. The comparable rates for those with a high school diploma but no college, those with some college or an associate's degree, and those with a bachelor's degree or higher were 10.6 percent, 8.3 percent, and 4.9 percent, respectively. The advantage enjoyed by those with more education can also be seen in their higher rates of participation in paid work. Fewer than half the individuals who lacked a high school education participated in the labor force in April 2010. Those with more education had higher participation rates. College graduates, for example, participated at a 77.3 percent rate.

Race and ethnicity also affect one's likelihood of being unemployed. Historically, African Americans have been jobless at higher rates than whites or Hispanics. In April 2010, the black unemployment rate stood at 16.5 percent, compared to 12.5 percent for Hispanics, 9.0 percent for whites, and 6.8 percent for Asians. When high-unemployment categories overlap, the resulting unemployment rates can be extraordinarily high. In December 2009, for example, the unemployment rate for black teenagers (ages 16 to 19) reached an astonishing 48 percent. (For white teens, the rate was a little under 24 percent.)

References:

Clark, Andrew E., and Andrew J. Oswald, "Unhappiness and Unemployment." Economic Journal 104, no. 424 (May 1994), 648-659.

Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Gerdtham, Ulf-G., and Magnus Johannesson, "A Note on the Effect of Unemployment on Mortality." Journal of Health Economics 22, no. 3 (May 2003), 505-518.

Lubove, Roy, The Struggle for Social Security, 1900-1935. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.

Schiller, Bradley, The Economics of Poverty and Discrimination, 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008.

Sharp, Ansel, Charles Register, and Paul Grimes, Economics of Social Issues, 19th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2009.

Strully, Kate W., "Job Loss and Health in the U.S. Labor Market." Demography 46, no. 2 (May 2009), 221-246.

"Symposium: The Natural Rate of Unemployment." Journal of Economic Perspectives 11, no. 1 (1997): 3-108.

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