Explore an interactive tool that provides regularly updated information on labor market outcomes of recent college graduates.

Experts recommend preparing your finances accordingly if you're expecting to be laid off soon, taking actions such as looking into the cost of replacing employer-sponsored benefits like healthcare.

Over 1.9 million Americans—more than a quarter of those unemployed—have been classified as 'long-term' unemployed in a given month in 2026, meaning they've been out of work for at least 27 weeks.

Explore an up-to-date layoffs tracker with Layoffs.fyi, a tool that a startup founder created in 2020 to track tech and startup layoffs in real time.

Explore the most common jobs for Americans, broken down by age and gender.

The unemployment rate is calculated using a monthly survey that the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to identify those who are employed or actively looking for work.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics releases a monthly 'jobs report' that tracks the unemployment rate, the number of Americans currently on payroll, and more.

The US youth unemployment rate jumped from 6.6% in 2023 to 10.4% in 2025.

Explore an interactive chart that shows peoples' annual salaries by occupation

The median salary for full-time workers in the United States was roughly $49.5K in 2024. An interactive chart details how salaries differ by occupation.

Why the employment report matters to Wall Street

On the first Friday of every month, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the infamous "jobs report." The report essentially tracks how US employment is doing, from the unemployment rate to the number of people in the US currently on payroll. But most importantly, the jobs report has major implications for the economy at large. To find out how this monthly report impacts Wall Street, read this article.

Only 3% of workers 18 and older had a 25+ year tenure at their current job as of 2024

Surprisingly, this statistic hasn't changed significantly between 1996 and 2024, despite news about job hopping becoming more common in recent years.

25% of US households had no regular income as of 2024

Some states had higher shares of no-income households than others: West Virginia, for instance, had a national high of 34% of households with no income. These states tend to have older populations, higher rates of disability, and lower median incomes overall. In such contexts, a larger portion of households rely on non-earned income sources or report no income during the survey period.

See America's loneliness and disconnection—charted

This series of graphs visually depicts various aspects of American society's connection to others, including the percentage of Americans who feel they have friends or family they can count on (90%), share of people who feel close to at least one other person (86%), and more.

62% of independent workers said they would prefer permanent or non-contract work

In the consulting firm McKinsey's 2022 "American Opportunity Survey," 36% of employed respondents (about 58 million Americans) classified themselves as "independent workers." But they're not all thrilled about their current professional status.

Unemployment is generally sorted into four different types: frictional, cyclical, structural, and institutional.

The clearest sign of a recession is a steady increase in job losses and high unemployment.

See which college degrees had the highest unemployment rates as of May 2025, with degrees in anthropology, physics, and computer engineering ranking high on the list.

Visualizing how American men and women spend every hour of the day, by decade of life

Drawing on three years of Census time-use data, the tool tracks 12 activities—sleep, work, housework, caregiving, TV, and more—across age groups from the 20s through 70s. One persistent gap: women spend 45 more minutes per day on housework than men on average.

1 in 5 American adults report daily loneliness

Twenty percent of US adults said they felt lonely "a lot of the day yesterday" in Gallup polling conducted in 2024. The survey was conducted with more than 6,000 adults who took part in a web survey.

In a survey of US Gen Z workers, 53% were freelancing for at least 40 hours per week

Overall, Gen Z has a pretty different attitude about work from previous generations, partly because of the economic hardship they’ve witnessed being born into the Great Recession and coming of age during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The US unemployment rate soared to over 24% during the Great Depression, the highest in recorded history.

The US federal government employs roughly 3 million people

Tracking began in 1939, when the federal workforce consisted of about 1 million people. The total peaked in 1990 at 3.4 million, and hit a recent low in 2014 at 2.7 million.

A podcast on America’s coming demographic crisis

This podcast explores how America’s coming demographic crisis is bad for employers. According to Bloomberg, businesses still need humans to make the economy work. However, too few workers in the US are actually working, and too few people are...

When your 9-to-5 becomes optional

You've seen the headlines. But what would actually happen if everyone's 9-to-5 became optional? We dug into the data. Traced automation philosophy back thousands of years. Examined what happened when elevator operators disappeared. Looked at Alaska's 40-year experiment paying every citizen. And investigated the Philippines, where 89% of call center jobs are now at risk. What we found was more positive than bleak. This video explores three questions: What does the data actually show? What does history tell us about this kind of disruption? And what happens when work becomes optional?

Americans are retiring later than they used to

A Gallup poll from 2022 found that the percentage of adults between the ages of 55 and 74 who are retired is declining.

Unemployment benefits are calculated as a percentage of a worker's average weekly wages over a recent base period.

Explore data on every US county with this interactive

The Community Explorer is an interactive tool that brings the power of big data and machine learning to the equity-related policy discussion. Search by economic profile and county and see the country from a different lens.

Visualize the most common job in every US state, from fast food worker to home health aide

Washington is the only state where "software developer" was the most common job (thanks, in part, to Microsoft and Amazon), whereas "fast food worker" was the most common occupation in 17 states.

Calculate whether or not you're in the American middle class

In 2022, roughly 52% of US adults lived in middle-income households. This income calculator can help you determine whether or not you're one of them. Specifically, the calculator lets you enter your household income, location, and more to see where you line up in Pew's government data.

See where the United States ranked in annual working hours per worker among major countries over time.

Explore the Opportunity Atlas and see which places in America offer the highest social mobility.

We may never know if Americans are now lonelier than ever before due to limited data

Formal data collection on loneliness is recent, limiting historical comparisons from before the year 2000. That means statements about how people are more lonely than ever before are difficult to prove or disprove.

Explore why Americans are drinking less alcohol

US alcohol consumption fell 5% in 2025, with beer and wine leading the decline. Economists point to tighter budgets and less face-to-face socializing overall, while younger Americans are increasingly choosing not to drink.

Nearly 1 in 4 Americans over age 65 is still working

While many of these Americans are often working part-time, the share varies significantly by US state. While roughly 29% of those over the age of 65 work in Vermont, only about 17% do the same in West Virginia.

One-third of early- and mid-career workers have considered quitting due to stress

In 2024, around half of all full-time employees polled by the National Alliance on Mental Illness reported experiencing burnout at their jobs. Around a third of all employees ages 18 to 49 had considered quitting their jobs due to workplace stress.

Visualizing cause of death over time in America

As people age, their life expectancy decreases, but the timing and speed of this decline have evolved over the years. Check out this chart which shows the shift in various causes of death of Americans over the last few decades. Data from the...

The US has been through 34 recessions since 1854

From 1855 to 2020, the average US recession lasted for an average of 17 months. But in the 20th and 21st centuries, the average recession length has shortened, decreasing to 14 months.