Google searches related to unemployment correlate with BLS measures of unemployment

Select Search Volume Indices and the unemployment rate indexed to January 2020, 2004-present

Note: Google trends series is an average of Search Volume Indices for six topics/queries. The topics and queries included are unemployment benefits (topic), job (topic), unemployment (topic), file for unemployment (query). The list of indices is inspired by Woloszko (2020), Kohns and Bhattacharjee (2023), and Goldsmith-Pinkham and Sojourner (2020). The "job" search topic is divided by 100 before being included into the average. Updated May 13, 2026.
Chart: Economic Policy InstituteSource: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Google Trends.Get the dataCreated with Datawrapper