What it measures
- State initial claims for unemployment insurance each week
- State continued weeks claimed
What it does not measure
Most misreadings of labor data come from asking a dataset a question it was not built to answer. These are the limits worth holding onto.
- Everyone who lost a job. Eligibility and filing rules vary by state
- Layoffs in a specific occupation or industry
Update cadence
Weekly, typically published Thursdays for the prior week.
Occupation pages name the specific release behind each figure and when it was imported, so you can see how current a number is rather than assuming it is new. More on that on about the data.
How JobMarketHealth uses it
- Shown on every state labor-market page (50 states and DC) as weekly context.
- Claims are not used in Job Market Health scores or to describe a state's direction.
Where it sits
This dataset is displayed as context on the pages described above and is not an input to the score. Read the methodology.
Official source
U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration publishes Weekly Unemployment Insurance Claims (ETA 539). JobMarketHealth organizes and derives from that public data and is not its publisher.
DOL unemployment insurance weekly claims data
Related guides
- How to compare local job marketsOccupational data goes local through OEWS employment and concentration. Monthly demand data mostly does not, so local comparisons need care about what is being compared.
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