Referencing alternative measures of labor utilization provides great insights on an evolving economic landscape. Instead of taking the popular "Unemployment Rate" (which is the official U.S. unemployment rate) as the quintessential employment picture, it's advisable to check out other measures. These include U-1, U-2, U-3 (this is the official unemployment rate), U-4, U-5, and U-6. These are published monthly at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. As you'll note in the accompanying chart, U-6 unemployment has just hit a 3-year high, whereas U-3 has remained relatively unchanged since July 2024. (The figures illustrated are seasonally adjusted).
U-6 represents everything in U-3 plus "all people marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all people marginally attached to the labor force". This provides a much broader perspective of economic vitality as it showcases underemployment due to economic reasons. For your reference (from the BLS), "People marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. People employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule."
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