25 Million Americans Are Unemployed Or Can't Find Full-Time Work

by Jacob Goldstein

Today's jobs report was even worse than expected. The economy added only 54,000 jobs during May — not even enough to keep up with population growth — and the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent.
Dig a little deeper, and the unemployment picture looks even worse. Here are a few key numbers.

Enlarge Jess Jiang/NPR *Have looked for work in the past year, but not in the past four weeks

  There are 13.9 million Americans who are out of work and actively looking for a job. These are the people counted in the traditional unemployment number.
On top of that, another 8.5 million people want a full time job but can only find part-time work.
And there are an additional 2.2 million people want a job and have looked in the past year, but haven't looked in the past month.
These numbers combined make up what is sometimes known as the broader unemployment rate (the government calls this measure U-6). The broader unemployment rate is now just under 16 percent:
Jess Jiang/NPR