Good Jobs Rate Up Slightly In December

The good jobs (GGJ) rate was 45.3 percent in December, up slightly from November's rate of 44.9 percent. Given seasonal patterns in employment, it is notable that the current rate is a full percentage point higher than in December 2014.

The percentage of U.S. adults who were participating in the workforce by working full time, working part time or actively seeking and being available for work was 67.3 percent. This is down only slightly from the rate in November (67.5 percent). Gallup's workforce participation measure averaged 67.7 percent between January 2010 and June 2013, but since then has averaged about one point lower, at 66.9 percent. Higher participation rates in the past several months may signal returning strength in the labor market.

Gallup's unadjusted U.S. unemployment rate was 5.6 percent in December, essentially unchanged from November's 5.7 percent and tied with October 2015 for the lowest in any month since Gallup began tracking the measure in 2010. The unemployment rate in December 2014 was 5.8 percent. Gallup's U.S. unemployment rate represents the percentage of adults in the workforce who did not have any paid work in the past seven days, either for an employer or themselves, and who were actively looking for and available to work.

Unlike Gallup's GGJ rate which is a percentage of the total population, the unemployment rates that Gallup and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report are percentages of the labor force. Gallup's measure of underemployment in December was 14.0 percent, down 0.6 points from November and in line with the rates measured in October (13.8 percent) and September (14.1 percent).