In 2022, the jobless rate was better than any other year

From month to month, we get snapshots of unemployment from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — a look at how many people are working at a particular moment. But another piece of unemployment data, which comes out just once annually, provides a more holistic picture of what the labor market looked like over an entire year. It’s part of the annual Work Experience of the Population report, and the data for 2022 dropped Tuesday.

Let’s travel back to 2022. It was the year of midterm elections, the easing of COVID-19, Kim Kardashian dating Pete Davidson and “extremely low headline unemployment,” said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute.

In any given month that year, the unemployment rate hovered around 3.6%. But if you look at how many people were unemployed over the whole year, it was a different story.

“The unemployment rate was 7.6%,” said Shierholz. “So twice as many people experienced unemployment at some point during the year than, you know, the average monthly unemployment rate in 2022.”

That 7.6% is the lowest proportion in the history of that data, which the government started collecting in 1958. The historic low came during the “great resignation,” when many Americans found it easy to switch jobs. 

“People were quitting their job and in many cases, just finding another job without having to face any gap, any gap in their paychecks and any gap in time worked,” Shierholz said.

Workers had more choices, said Erica Groshen, senior economics adviser at the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

“That suggests, actually, a very efficient labor market, that people were finding good matches,” she said. 

The labor market has been strong across virtually every demographic, said David Madland with the Center for American Progress. “For women, for men, for young people, for older workers,” he said.

Despite some cooling since last year, Harry Holzer with Georgetown University said workers have maintained leverage.  

“Employers will keep needing some level of compensation growth to hire and retain workers,” he said.

Or workers may outright demand it.

“Workers aren’t nearly as fearful that if something goes wrong with their organizing efforts, or a strike, that they’ll get fired for it,” said Ruth Milkman, a professor at the City University of New York’s School of Labor and Urban Studies.

The recent strength of the job market has infused new energy into organized labor, she added.