Chart comes from my blog post, see full analysis here: https://polimetrics.substack.com/p/unemployment-claims-and-google-search . Data from Department of Labor ETA 539 Report and Google Trends. Made in Excel.
With the federal government shutdown, economic data that is typically released and reported on is not available. There was some research during the Covid-19 pandemic showing how Google Trends data on searches for terms like "unemployment benefits" could be used as a good predictor of unemployment claims, since there is about a 2-week lag in DOL's reporting.
So with the UI claims data not being released into October now, I decided to take a look at the data from 2022 through October 2025. There is a pretty strong correlation between the two measures during this time frame, and since the shutdown began there has been a surge in Google searches for "unemployment benefits".
I did a full analysis in the blog post, so check it out if you're interested. But I found the surge in Google searches to be really interesting since it is happening right at the same time that the data blackout begins.
by Public_Finance_Guy
3 Comments
I imagine this is furloughed government employees wondering if they can get unemployment mainly.
This concept is fantastic.
Wouldn’t you expect it to correlate more with initial claims? Why would someone who is continuing to claim benefits (after having already done so) be googling “unemployment benefits”?