In the paper we completely describe characters (central positive-definite functions) of simple locally finite groups that can be represented as inductive limits of (products of) symmetric groups under block diagonal embeddings. Each such group G defines an infinite graded graph that encodes the embedding scheme. The group G acts on the space X of infinite paths of the associated graph by changing initial edges of paths. Assuming the finiteness of the set of ergodic measures for the system (X, G), we establish that each non-regular indecomposable character χ : G → C is uniquely determined by the formula χ(g) = μ 1 (Fix(g)) α 1 · · · μ k (Fix(g)) α k , where μ 1 , . . . , μ k are G-ergodic measures, Fix(g) = {x ∈ X: gx = x}, and α 1 , . . . , α k ∈ {0, 1, . . .}. We illustrate our results on the group of rational permutations of the unit interval. Published by Elsevier Inc.