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Measuring the Effects of the Covid-19 Delta Wave on the U.S. Hourly Labor Market
In this article, we take a closer look at the implications of rising Covid-19 cases and vaccination rates for the U.S. hourly labor market. To do so, we rely on geographic variation in the high-frequency data collected by the firm Homebase with its timekeeping software. This data source allows us to make use of U.S. state-level variation on a daily basis in order to decompose the effects on hourly employees and hours worked from both rising cases and vaccinations.
Newsletter
The Stay-at-Home Labor Market: Google Searches, Unemployment Insurance, and Public Health Orders
This article looks at the relationships between internet searches for unemployment-related terms, unemployment insurance (UI), and the public health orders issued in the U.S. during the Covid-19 pandemic. We find that Google searches for unemployment-related subjects surged before the record increase in initial UI claims, which in turn peaked before the public health orders were implemented. As of mid-April 2020, these orders covered the vast majority of the U.S. population. Since then, the rates of increase in both search activity and initial UI claims have slowed.
What’s New in CARTS 2.1? Updates to Our Index Tracking National Retail Sales
In this Chicago Fed Insights article, we provide an update on the Chicago Fed Advance Retail Trade Summary (CARTS). As readers may remember, CARTS debuted in mid-2021. A summary measure of multiple high-frequency indicators of retail sales (including payment card transactions, foot traffic, gas sales, and consumer sentiment), CARTS grew out of pandemic-era research that aimed to improve the timeliness and reliability of traditional measures of U.S. retail spending.
Working Paper
Using the Eye of the Storm to Predict the Wave of Covid-19 UI Claims
We leverage an event-study research design focused on the seven costliest hurricanes to hit the US mainland since 2004 to identify the elasticity of unemployment insurance filings with respect to search intensity. Applying our elasticity estimate to the state-level Google Trends indexes for the topic “unemployment,” we show that out-of-sample forecasts made ahead of the official data releases for March 21 and 28 predicted to a large degree the extent of the Covid-19 related surge in the demand for unemployment insurance. In addition, we provide a robust assessment of the uncertainty ...
Working Paper
Using the Eye of the Storm to Predict the Wave of Covid-19 UI Claims
We leverage an event-study research design focused on the seven costliest hurricanes to hit the US mainland since 2004 to identify the elasticity of unemployment insurance filings with respect to search intensity. Applying our elasticity estimate to the state-level Google Trends indexes for the topic “unemployment,” we show that out-of-sample forecasts made ahead of the official data releases for March 21 and 28 predicted to a large degree the extent of the Covid-19 related surge in the demand for unemployment insurance. In addition, we provide a robust assessment of the uncertainty ...
Newsletter
Measuring Detroit’s Economic Progress with the DEAI
This article explains what the Detroit Economic Activity Index (DEAI) tells us about Detroit’s economic progress as of late 2019. Although the rate of progress had slowed some since 2016, the city continued to make headway last year in its recovery from bankruptcy.In a previous Chicago Fed Letter,1 we introduced the DEAI to show that Detroit was doing better in late 2016 than in late 2014, when it exited bankruptcy. According to the DEAI, there were signs of increasing private investment, higher employment, lower unemployment, rising incomes, and improving real estate values in December ...
Working Paper
The perils of working with Big Data and a SMALL framework you can use to avoid them
The use of “Big Data” to explain fluctuations in the broader economy or guide the business decisions of a firm is now so commonplace that in some instances it has even begun to rival more traditional government statistics and business analytics. Big data sources can very often provide advantages when compared to these more traditional data sources, but with these advantages also comes the potential for pitfalls. We lay out a framework called SMALL that we have developed in order to help interested parties as they navigate the big data minefield. Based on a set of five questions, the SMALL ...
Initial UI Claims and Google Trends in the Post-Pandemic Era
Initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims are a weekly measure from the U.S. Department of Labor of how many new people have filed for unemployment benefits. A well-known leading indicator and one of the few official statistics released at a weekly frequency, initial UI claims are carefully monitored by economists for signs of turning points in economic activity. That said, they are at best an imperfect measure of turning points for several reasons: The information comes out with a lag, it is sensitive to changing seasonal patterns, and it is subject to revision. Given these challenges, ...
Working Paper
The perils of working with Big Data and a SMALL framework you can use to avoid them
The use of “Big Data” to explain fluctuations in the broader economy or guide the business decisions of a firm is now so commonplace that in some instances it has even begun to rival more traditional government statistics and business analytics. Big data sources can very often provide advantages when compared to these more traditional data sources, but with these advantages also comes the potential for pitfalls. We lay out a framework called SMALL that we have developed in order to help interested parties as they navigate the big data minefield. Based on a set of five questions, the SMALL ...
A Closer Look at the Correlation Between Google Trends and Initial Unemployment Insurance Claims
Since the onset of the pandemic, there has been growing interest in tracking labor market activity with “big data” sources like Google Trends.1 Just as an example, one can track how the number of Google searches with the term unemployment office has changed over the past week for the Chicago metro area or explore how unemployment became one of the top searched issues across the U.S. during the early months of the pandemic here.