The Fuller Project analyzed data from the U.S. Labor Department and various state agencies for the story Coronavirus Shutdowns Make Women the Majority of Unemployment Seekers in States Across U.S., published April 22, 2020.
We requested weekly breakdowns of initial unemployment claims from every state, from March 1 through April 11, by gender, race, ethnicity, age, industry and occupation. Seventeen states provided some or all of the information requested, either via special request or by publishing it online.
For a historic benchmark, we analyzed the U.S. Labor Department's "Characteristics of the Insured Unemployed" data, from 1995 through 2019. This data includes state-by-state demographic, industry, and occupation breakdowns of the total number of people receiving unemployment insurance during the week of the month that includes the 19th.
"Initial" claims, from the states, and "insured" claims, from the federal government, are very different measures. However, the federal government does not publish similar data on initial claims.
An individual files an initial claim for unemployment benefits to a state agency upon separation from an employer. But not everyone who files a claim gets approved. An individual who has already filed an initial claim and who has experienced a week of unemployment then files a continued claim to claim benefits for that week of unemployment. Continued claims are also referred to as "insured" unemployment.
This article by the Brookings Institution provides a good explainer of unemployment insurance and how it has changed under the coronavirus relief measures.
State agencies did not provide consistent groupings for race and ethnicity. We standardized the groupings to conform to the federal data to the extent possible. In addition, tracking changes in the total and share of “white” applicants is problematic because the data only disaggregates totals by one characteristic at a time, separating race and ethnicity. Most Latinos choose “white” for race.
A reader-friendly version of the state statistics can be downloaded here.
The following is a summary of the information provided by each state:
| State | Sex | Age | Race | Ethnicity | Industry | Occupation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | Y | N | Y | Y | N | N |
| Alaska | Y | N | N | N | N | N |
| Idaho | Y | Y | N | N | N | N |
| Minnesota | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
| Montana | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N |
| Nebraska | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N |
| New Jersey | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N |
| New Mexico | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| New York | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
| North Dakota | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Ohio | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | N |
| Oklahoma | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N |
| Oregon | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | Y |
| Rhode Island | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Utah | Y | N | N | N | N | N |
| Virginia | Y | Y | Y | Y | N | N |
| Wyoming | Y | Y | N | N | N | N |
We manually standardized the statistics from the state agencies into a single spreadsheet. The following source notes were accurate as of publication. Agencies, including those not listed here, may have changed the information they publish online.
| State | Source Note |
|---|---|
| Alabama | Alabama Department of Labor emailed statistics, uploaded to DocumentCloud. |
| Alaska | Alaska Department of Labor emailed statistics, only a gender breakdown for one week, uploaded to DocumentCloud. |
| Idaho | Idaho Department of Labor statistics available online. |
| Minnesota | Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development statistics available online. |
| Montana | Montana Department of Labor & Industry emailed Excel file, csv in folder. |
| Nebraska | Nebraska Department of Labor emailed Excel file, csv in folder. |
| New Jersey | New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development emailed weekly breakdowns, uploaded to DocumentCloud. |
| New Mexico | New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions emailed Excel file, csv in folder. |
| New York | New York State Department of Labor statistics available online. |
| North Dakota | North Dakota Department of Labor Market Information statistics available online. |
| Ohio | Ohio Department of Job and Family Services monthly statistics available online. |
| Oklahoma | Oklahoma Department of Commerce monthly statistics available online. |
| Oregon | Oregon Employment Department statistics available online |
| Rhode Island | Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training provided Excel spreadsheet, csv in folder. |
| Utah | Utah Department of Workforce Services emailed statistics, uploaded to DocumentCloud. |
| Virginia | Virginia Employment Commission Economic Information & Analytics sent Excel file, csv in folder. |
| Wyoming | Wyoming Department of Workforce Services statistics available online. |
Dates of school, restaurant, and workplace closures were pulled from the National Governors Association, press releases, and articles.
Field definitions can be found here.
We are sharing our data, documentation, and code in order to support further research and reporting on unemployment claims. However, users of this data should independently verify the accuracy of their findings prior to making them public, as The Fuller Project makes no representations or warranties as to any third party use of these materials.
All code in this repository is available under the MIT License. All output data files are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
For questions or feedback, please contact Sarah Ryley.