Google Searches Predict Initial Unemployment Insurance Claims
NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief No. 2020-5: The COVID-19 pandemic produced historically unprecedented numbers of layoffs, leading to surges in the number of unemployment filings: over 26 million Americans have filed claims for unemployment benefits (New York Times, 4/23/2020). In this brief we show how Google Trends searches predated or anticipated these filings, and how they were propagated across the different states as the coronavirus took its toll.
Authors: Zheng Tian and Stephan J. Goetz
Publication: NERCRD COVID-19 Issues Brief Series Date Published: May 1, 2020