U.S. Federal Unemployment Claims Remain Elevated, While Colorado Levels Stay Low

Using unemployment insurance data to track recent federal government layoffs (part 2)

As covered in last week’s article, every week the US Department of Labor publishes new data on unemployment insurance (UI) claims filed within each state and the nation. The most recent batch of data released earlier today reflects initial claims filed for the week ending March 1. 1,580 federal government (UCFE) initial unemployment claims were filed last week, nearly matching the 1,634 total number of initial claims processed the week prior. The 3,214 claims filed from February 16 to March 1 is the highest level of activity over a 14-day period for the U.S. since early 2021.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, chart and calculations by Ryan Gedney. Note: claims level for week ending February 22 was revised upward from 1,624.

Interestingly, Colorado UCFE claims moved little and remain low, with only 5 registered last week. However, similar to a trend discussed in last week’s article, a minority of states presently comprise the surge in national UCFE claims since February 16 compared to a pre-spike baseline. Shown below, 16 states, and the District of Columbia, make up over 91% of the nearly 2,000 additional UCFE initial claims filed in the last two weeks compared to the February 1-15 period that reflected typical levels. While this concentrated distribution is likely to flatten out as more states experience increases in UCFE claims, it’s important to identify those areas that are early drivers to the jump in national federal government layoffs.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor, table and calculations by Ryan Gedney.

Finally, I thought I’d share a cool product that the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) just recently released. It combines a couple different sources (American Community Survey and Current Employment Statistics) and estimates the number of federal workers within each state, by congressional district, county, and metro area. For this article, I was originally thinking of presenting some county-level QCEW federal government employment trends for Colorado (and still might sometime), but think these EPI estimates serve as a more flexible and useful guide at this time.