From my blog, see link for full details: https://polimetrics.substack.com/p/unemployment-claims-and-google-search-72a
Data from Department of Labor and Google Trends. Graph made in Excel.
Last week I posted about using Google Trends data to supplement Department of Labor data on unemployment insurance claims due to the two week lag in reporting and questions about data availability during the federal shutdown.
This week, I am showing an updated 3-week forecast for claims based on Google Trends data (which is currently surging for the search term “unemployment benefits”). My model still isn’t showing a dramatic increase in predicted UI claims, but I would suspect if searches stay elevated, that would change.
I also included graphs to show how UI claims and Google searches correlate strongly even at the state-level. California has a really close correlation between the two from 2023-2025, but not much of a response to the federal shutdown. Washington DC and New York, however, show really big surges in searches for unemployment benefits, and it looks like their UI claims may be on an upward trajectory.
Hope you guys find these graphs interesting! There are a few other states included in the blog post as well if you’re interested in seeing more. If you want me to look at a specific state next week, let me know!
by Public_Finance_Guy
4 Comments
Did searches spike before the end of the year in 2023 and 2024? To me, this looks like the DOL numbers are no longer accurate because it suddenly stops correlating around the time that Trump fired the DOL person for reporting a marginally negative jobs report. But maybe people know when they’re being laid off at the end of the year?
There is a correlation, but it seems pretty noisy. To the point where I wouldn’t want to trust it to predict the real numbers.
I’m not sure _why_ it’s so noisy, though. I guess the search results reflect people worried about getting laid off and not finding another job, not necessarily people actually experiencing that.
I’d anticipate that searching is high, but claims won’t start for another week or two at least because of this sentence that results when googling:
>It’s important to note that furloughed employees who later receive back pay for the same period will have to repay any unemployment benefits they received during that time.
A whole lot of people who have past experience with UI know it can take weeks to actually get the money in your pocket. If it takes weeks, and the shutdown ends, and you immediately have to pay the money back somehow but are waiting on back pay… That’s a mess a lot of people don’t want to end up dealing with versus just using a credit card or cutting back.
What’s the reasoning for looking at continued claims vs initial claims?
Is this better, maybe? Or telling a different story?
For reference, there’s been a big disconnect recently between searches and initial filings (in need of an explanation)
https://x.com/EconBerger/status/1976015941462003925?t=shbR3N5GmNATpCdpHlbFKg&s=19