The New Jersey Statewide Data System is pleased to release the New Jersey Unemployment Insurance Claims Dashboard. This dashboard uses linked, longitudinal administrative data from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development and the New Jersey Office of the Secretary of Higher Education to show the characteristics of individuals with initial unemployment claims between 2014 and 2022. Claimant outcomes, including post-claim employment and postsecondary enrollment, are presented by claimant experience — whether they exhausted benefits or not — and claimant characteristics.
How to interpret claims and outcomes
The dashboard illustrates characteristics of individuals with initial Unemployment Insurance claims in New Jersey for each quarter between 2014 and 2022. Claims were selected as the most recent claim per person in a year.
Claimants are presented by whether or not they exhausted their unemployment compensation benefits, which typically occurs after 26 weeks of benefits; however, this was adjusted during the COVID-19 pandemic with some extensions made available. In addition, claimant post-claim employment outcomes are presented by age and pre-claim occupation, as well as the quarter in which the claimant initially submitted a claim. Employment outcomes include the proportion of claimants each quarter who are employed within New Jersey following their claim and their median wages (inflation adjusted to 2022 dollars). Employment outcomes are only available for those who become employed in an Unemployment Insurance-covered job within New Jersey following their claim. Finally, higher education records are used to show how many claimants within each claim quarter go on to enroll in postsecondary education following their claim, which is measured as having any enrollment within the state after their initial claim quarter.
For more information on how claims were selected or categorized, please review the technical methodology here.
Highlights from this dashboard include:
- The number of claims that ended without exhaustion are higher than claims with exhausted benefits across claim periods.
- Claimants who ended their claim before reaching the point of exhausting their benefits tended to have better employment outcomes with higher quarterly earnings and employment connection compared to those who exhausted their benefits. This trend is similar for the different age groups and most occupational categories.
- The rate at which claimants enroll in postsecondary education following their claim is similar for both the exhausted and not exhausted groups. In other words, postsecondary enrollment is the same irrespective of claim exhaustion status. Post-claim enrollment peaked in mid-2020 following the rise in initial claims related to the pandemic.
View detailed outcomes in the dashboard linked below. To change the page, click on one of the three grey boxes at the top.