Data as of August 2026, chart starts 2012. Total population: 277.3M. Labor force participation rate: 61.6%.

• Employed ▼
• Underemployed ▼
• Unemployed ▼
• Discouraged ▲
• Retired ▲
• Not in labor force, other ▲
• Incarcerated, working ▬
• Incarcerated, not working ▬

This is an estimate of the United States labor force. Hover over any point in the graph for the exact date, total population, and labor force participation rate. The three full-color bottom bands (employed, underemployed, and unemployed) are the labor force and everything above (half opacity) is excluded. The legend’s arrows show whether each band increased or decreased over the last 6 months.

This is a rough estimate, constructed as follows:

• Employed, underemployed, unemployed, and discouraged: direct from the monthly Current Population Survey via FRED.
• Retired and other not-in-labor-force: split from the live monthly “not in labor force” total using a single fixed ratio from a 2023 CPS annual survey, applied to every month in the chart.
• Incarcerated, working and incarcerated, not working: BJS’s most recent combined prison + jail count, split by ACLU’s 2022 estimate of the share of incarcerated people doing wage labor (~65%), both held flat across the whole chart. The chart starts in 2012, shortly after the incarcerated population’s ~2008 peak, so this flat line understates a real (smaller, more gradual) decline.

The Civilian Noninstitutional Population that the first six bands are measured against explicitly excludes incarcerated people, so the two incarcerated bands are added on top as extra population rather than carved out of an existing one. The chart plots absolute headcounts rather than shares, so its own top edge traces total population growth over the window; that growth is entirely from the civilian side, since the incarcerated total is held flat.