EMRATIO · as of 2026-09-01
Employment-Pop Ratio
Employment-Population Ratio
View on FRED · EMRATIO ↗59.20%
yoy
▼ 0.84%
120 obs · monthly · percent── 1y ago 59.70%
What it is
Share of adults with a job. Cleaner than UNRATE when labor-force participation is shifting.
- source
- FRED
- frequency
- monthly
- units
- percent
- s.a.
- yes
What it’s telling us · as of 2026-09-01
Employment-pop sits at 59.2%, down half a percentage point from a year ago — a softer read than the headline unemployment rate alone would suggest. The ratio's been choppy since February (range of 58.9 to 59.3%) but the downtrend versus last year is real: fewer adults are actually working now than were twelve months back. For investors, this is the headwind under tenant rent-payment capacity; the unemployed don't pay rent, and a declining employment share means the pool of reliably employed renters is tightening even if the official jobless rate hasn't moved much.
⟡ auto-generated weekly · claude-haiku-4-5 · reviewed before publish
Related metrics
Get the data
Python · fredapi
"""
Employment-Pop Ratio — Share of adults with a job. Cleaner than UNRATE when labor-force participation is shifting.
Freq: monthly · Source: FRED
"""
from fredapi import Fred
fred = Fred(api_key="YOUR_FRED_API_KEY")
series = fred.get_series("EMRATIO")
print(series.tail())LLM prompt
You are analyzing FRED series EMRATIO — Employment-Population Ratio. Context: Share of adults with a job. Cleaner than UNRATE when labor-force participation is shifting. Attributes - Units: percent - Frequency: monthly - Source: FRED Latest observation: 59.20% as of 2026-09-01 Year-over-year change: -0.84% Analyze this metric for a tech-forward real estate investor with 1–3 properties. What is it signaling right now? What should I watch next?