February 27, 2012 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Work experience during 2010
A total of 152.3 million persons worked at some point during 2010. The proportion of the civilian noninstitutional population age 16 and over who worked at some time during 2010 was 63.7 percent, down from 64.9 percent in 2009. The number of persons who experienced some unemployment during 2010 decreased by 894,000 to 25.2 million.
Click legend items to change data display.
Click legend items to change data display. [Chart data]
*Persons whose ethnicity is identified as Hispanic or Latino may be of any race.
The percent of men who worked during 2010 was 69.3 percent, down from 70.6 percent in 2009. The proportion of women who worked at some point during 2010 was 58.5 percent, down from 59.6 percent in the prior year.
The proportions of whites (64.7 percent) and Hispanics (63.5 percent) who worked at some time during the year declined from 2009 to 2010, while the share of blacks (58.2 percent) and Asians (64.1 percent) were about unchanged.
Of the total who worked during 2010, 75.9 percent were employed year round (working 50 to 52 weeks, either full or part time), compared with 75.3 percent in 2009. The percentage of men employed year round rose by 1.1 percentage points to 76.7 percent in 2010, and the percentage of women working year round was nearly unchanged at 75.0 percent.
These data are from the Current Population Survey (CPS). To learn more, see "Work Experience of the Population — 2010" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-11-1719. These data are based on information collected in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) to the monthly CPS. The ASEC collects information on employment and unemployment experienced during the prior calendar year.
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