Which Hoosiers are successfully navigating the unemployment system?

• Author: Zimmer, Timothy E.

During periods of economic downturns and personal misfortune, unemployment services can offer a helping hand in regaining a foothold in the employment market for many Hoosiers. To better understand the composition of Hoosiers taking advantage of such services, this article analyzes a snapshot of Hoosiers accepting unemployment benefits over a 10-year period.

The data are longitudinal and include individual de-identified Indiana unemployment claimant data that are linked to wage records. Aggregated results are provided (and any incomplete observations were discarded). The data include observations from the first quarter of 2006 through the fourth quarter of 2015. (Data prior to 2006 were incomplete, and while data post-2015 were available, insufficient time had elapsed to allow for re-entry into the workplace.)

This information is based on individuals applying for Indiana unemployment insurance (UI) claim benefits. A person may appear multiple times in the claims data during this period. Each instance of an individual having a UI claim was considered a "unique episode." Each claims episode was then matched to the individual's wages before and after the claims episode and each matched claims episode is considered a unique observation.

Individuals without wage matches on both sides of the UI claim time period were excluded from the study. This process undoubtedly excludes those unable to find work after receiving UI benefits. It also excludes individuals coming into Indiana for work, leaving the state for employment or becoming self-employed. The matched wage records only include wages of individuals employed by companies covered by unemployment insurance. Wage data for the self-employed and those outside Indiana were unattainable and beyond the reach of this analysis. Unsurprisingly, the observation counts spike in response to the recession of 2008-2009 and generally decrease after that time (see Figure 1).

Figure 2 shows the home county of these claimants. Marion County made up 14 percent of the total with 214,183 claimant observations. Allen County was home to 6 percent of the total claimants in this data set.

Demographics

Nearly 65 percent of those successfully moving through the system (from work to unemployment and back to work) were male and 35 percent were female (see Figure 3). The remaining 0.03 percent of claimants were other/no response/incomplete or erroneous data.

Figure 3: Gender of claimants Male 979,470 Female 535,735 Source...