Assessing Labor Market Conditions Using High-Frequency Data

Abstract

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020, the U.S. economy experienced a sharp, unexpected recession with large employment losses. The information on employment available from traditional data sources arrives with a lag and does not promptly reflect sudden changes in labor market conditions. In this article, we discuss how new high-frequency data from Homebase and Ultimate Kronos Group can offer critical information on the state of labor markets in real time. Using these datasets, we construct coincident employment indices to assess employment at a high frequency. Employment during the pandemic reacted to changes in the number of infections and the restrictions imposed by government officials (see, e.g., the discussion in Dvorkin and Bharadwaj, 2020). Our latest data suggest that employment has recently increased and will continue to increase as the pandemic wanes.