This brief describes how researchers can use unemployment insurance (UI) wage records to assess social and economic mobility. UI wage records are primarily used to administer the UI program, but they also offer researchers a detailed data source for viewing individual employment and earnings over time. These records contain individual-level information on quarterly wages and salaries and sometimes offer information on employers, hours or weeks worked, and occupation, making the wage records one of the few longitudinal administrative data sources tracking individual workers’ labor market outcomes.
How have researchers used these data?
Researchers have used UI wage records to track how people’s earnings change over time and to study broader patterns of job mobility. Because the data provide consistent quarterly records, they’re especially useful for following individuals across years and evaluating the impacts of programs like job training or education. A big advantage is the ability to link UI records with other datasets, such as college enrollment or welfare participation, which lets researchers measure outcomes before and after interventions, such as employment levels, differences in incomes, and hours worked. This flexibility has made UI data a useful resource for studying both descriptive trends and causal effects in economic mobility.
What are these data’s limitations, and are there opportunities for increased use?
UI wage records face several limitations: access is costly, time consuming, and complex and often requires state-level agreements; they capture only taxable earnings from covered employment, excluding self-employment, informal work, and many federal or seasonal jobs; and they lack detail on job quality, hours worked, or worker satisfaction. Tracking individuals across states also can be difficult. Opportunities to increase access include centralizing and streamlining access processes, standardizing datasets across states, and linking UI records with other administrative data to enrich analyses.
