A microsecond is an SI unit of time equal to one millionth (0.000001 or 10−6 or 1⁄1,000,000) of a second. Its symbol is μs, sometimes simplified to us when Unicode is not available. A microsecond is an SI unit of time equal to one millionth (0.000001 or 10−6 or 1⁄1,000,000) of a second. Its symbol is μs, sometimes simplified to us when Unicode is not available. A microsecond is equal to 1000 nanoseconds or 1⁄1,000 of a millisecond. Because the next SI prefix is 1000 times larger, measurements of 10−5 and 10−4 seconds are typically expressed as tens or hundreds of microseconds.