The unemployment rate you hear quoted most often — the one that makes headlines — is called the U-3 rate. But economists and labor analysts track six different measures of labor underutilization, and the broadest of those is the U-6 rate. Understanding what U-6 captures, how it differs from the headline figure, and why it gets attention tells you a lot about the true state of the American labor market.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six unemployment measures — labeled U-1 through U-6 — as part of its monthly Current Population Survey. Each measure captures a progressively wider slice of labor market distress.
| Measure | What It Counts |
|---|---|
| U-1 | People unemployed 15 weeks or longer |
| U-2 | Job losers and people who completed temporary jobs |
| U-3 | Total unemployed (the "official" rate) |
| U-4 | U-3 plus discouraged workers |
| U-5 | U-4 plus other marginally attached workers |
| U-6 | U-5 plus people working part-time for economic reasons |
U-3 is the figure most news coverage uses. It counts people who are jobless, available to work, and actively looked for a job in the past four weeks.
U-6 counts all of that — plus two additional groups that U-3 leaves out entirely.
Marginally attached workers are people who are not currently employed, want a job, and have looked for work in the past year — but did not search in the past four weeks. Because they didn't search recently enough, they fall outside the U-3 definition of "unemployed."
Within this group is a subset called discouraged workers — people who have given up actively looking because they believe no jobs are available for them. U-6 captures both discouraged workers and other marginally attached workers who stopped searching for different reasons (transportation barriers, illness, family obligations, etc.).
This is often the largest addition U-6 makes over U-3. These are workers who want full-time employment but are working part-time because:
This group is sometimes called involuntary part-time workers. They have jobs — so they don't show up as unemployed in U-3 — but they represent significant underemployment in the economy.
U-6 is structurally broader, so it's always higher than U-3. The gap between them varies with economic conditions.
📊 In a strong labor market, the gap between U-3 and U-6 tends to narrow. Employers hire more full-time workers and fewer people drop out of job searching.
In a weak labor market — recessions, slow recoveries — the gap widens. Discouraged workers increase, marginally attached workers grow, and involuntary part-time employment rises as companies cut hours instead of making outright layoffs.
Historically, U-6 has run roughly 3 to 5 percentage points higher than U-3 during relatively stable periods, though the gap has been wider during and after recessions. During the aftermath of the 2008–2009 financial crisis, U-6 reached into the mid-teens while U-3 peaked around 10%.
U-6 is a statistical measure, not a policy threshold. It doesn't determine who receives unemployment benefits, affect individual claim eligibility, or trigger automatic federal benefit extensions (those are tied to different measures under specific program rules).
It also has limitations:
Still, many economists consider U-6 a more honest representation of labor market slack than U-3 alone, particularly during periods when official unemployment appears low but wage growth and worker bargaining power remain weak.
🔍 It's worth being clear about something: U-6 has no direct connection to how unemployment insurance claims are processed or decided. Whether someone qualifies for benefits, how much they receive, and how long benefits last are determined entirely by their state's unemployment agency — based on wage history, reason for job separation, and program rules. U-6 doesn't enter those calculations.
What U-6 does reflect is a reality that many people in the labor market experience: the official unemployment rate can look relatively low even when a significant share of the workforce is struggling to find adequate work. That gap — between what the headline number shows and what workers actually experience — is exactly what U-6 was designed to make visible.
Even U-6 is a national aggregate. The same economic period can look very different depending on:
The BLS releases U-6 monthly alongside U-3, and historical data going back decades is publicly available through the BLS website. Understanding where U-6 sits relative to its historical range — not just its current level — is often more informative than the number in isolation.