Answers resolve to that month's value of data series LNS12300060: Employment–Population Ratio — 25-54 Yrs. Seasonally Adjusted. See it on BLS | FRED. Answers are rounded to the nearest integer %, with .5% rounding up.

For example, the 2023-02 (Feb 2022) data point was 80.5% ⟶ resolves to 81%.

Zvi's house rules apply.

Sorting answers by A-Z is recommended. That is chronological order.

Explanation

The employment–population ratio (EPOP) or employment rate is the fraction of the population that is employed. It can be obtained from the labor force participation rate (LFPR) and unemployment rate (U) as follows:

EPOP = LFPR * (100% - U)

Personal opinion

I consider the EPOP a better reflection of the state of the labor market because it accounts for discouraged workers who stopped searching for work, and thereby exited the labor force.

Ideally, I would like to look at the version of EPOP obtained from the equivalent of U-6 (see this explanation of different measures of unemployment), which, additionally, considers underemployment in the form of someone working part-time because they can't find a suitable full-time job. But such data is unavailable.

The prime-age (age 25-54) data is used for robustness against demographic changes and cultural changes in retirement patterns.

More info

The BLS's Technical Note, including definitions for "employed" in the household survey (quoted as at 2024-08-29):

People are classified as employed if they did any work at all as paid employees during the reference week; worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm; or worked without pay at least 15 hours in a family business or farm. People are also counted as employed if they were temporarily absent from their jobs because of illness, bad weather, vacation, labor-management disputes, or personal reasons.

Relevant data series:

- Labor Force Participation Rate: age 16+ (BLS, FRED) | age 25-54 (BLS, FRED)

- Unemployment Rate (U-3): age 16+ (BLS, FRED) | age 25-54 (BLS, FRED)

- Employment–Population Ratio: age 16+ (BLS, FRED) | age 25-54 (BLS, FRED)

See also these questions on Metaculus:

- US Employment–Population ratio below 51.3% in years 2024, 2026, 2030?

- US Employment–Population ratio 5 years after "AGI"?

Fine Print

Fine print moved to this comment below.

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