Employment-To-Population Ratio

Let's start with the unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of people who want a job but...can't find one. The flip side of that figure is the employment rate: the percentage of the population that currently does have a job. Or two or three.

One way to track that stat is the employment-to-population ratio. It measures the number of employed people compared to the total number of people in the population.

So...if your country has 350 million people, and 200 million have jobs, the employment-to-population ratio would be 350 million to 200 million = 57%.

One note: the unemployment rate measures the number of people looking for a job who can't find one. It doesn't include someone who's retired, or a trust-fund jet setter (you might not be technically employed, but you're not actually "unemployed," at least according to the unemployment rate definition).

So while the employment-to-population ratio measures overall employment in a population, you can't just add up the figure with the unemployment rate to get 100%. There's a ton of people not employed...but not actively looking for work...that needs to get counted as well.