Unemployment Claims Sites See Dramatic Increases in Traffic

As the nation’s unemployment rate continues to climb, it seems the newly jobless are increasingly filing and managing their unemployment online.

Traffic to state unemployment claims filing domains has, not surprisingly, jumped drastically over the past year in areas hardest hit by the recession. Markets affected most by the real estate implosion, such as California and Arizona (eapply4ui.edd.ca.gov & egov.azdes.gov ), as well as those facing down the automotive meltdown, such as Ohio and Michigan ( unemployment.ohio.gov & bwuc-claims.state.mi.us ), are seeing UVs to their claims gateways explode.

While traffic to those claims filing sites alone is certainly not evidence of conversion (actually filing a claim), the trends post-September 2008 are clearly apparent. Additionally, Unique Visitor trends to sites of populous states, like California’s eapply4ui.edd.ca.gov, are clearly behaving as leading indicators of trends to job search sites like Monster.com; patterns of traffic to California’s site appear to lag Monster by about a month or two.

Comments

[conceptwizard:]

As always, the official rate belies the true scope of unemployment by removing from the workforce count a large number of workers who are inactive or “discouraged” in seeking work, and by counting as employed those who are only able to get part-time hours. While state-by-state statistics for this expanded definition of unemployment are not available, it is very likely that the real unemployment rate in Michigan is now approaching 25 percent, and that in a number of states, including California, it is around 20 percent. On a national level, this broader rate of unemployment and underemployment stood at 16.4 percent in May. These are near-depression-level figures.

Jun 22 02:21 PM

[Dave Wrixon:]

Getting a better class of unemployed. It would seem that the Middle Class are starting to hit the dole queues big time, metaphorically of course.

Jun 22 02:38 PM

[Kentut Poin...:]

At least in Silicon Valley, the official rate does not include foreign workers (visa holder) who got laid off and ineligible for the unemployment benefit. Most of them have to go back to school or go home which, again, never got recorded by the official rate.

Jun 23 02:27 PM