‘Google it!’ Forecasting the US unemployment rate with a Google job search index

Francesco D'Amuri and Juri Marcucci

No 2009-32, ISER Working Paper Series from Institute for Social and Economic Research

Abstract: We suggest the use of an Internet job-search indicator (the Google Index, GI) as the best leading indicator to predict the US unemployment rate. We perform a deep out-of-sample forecasting comparison analyzing many models that adopt both our preferred leading indicator (GI), the more standard initial claims or combinations of both. We find that models augmented with the GI outperform the traditional ones in predicting the monthly unemployment rate, even in most state-level forecasts and in comparison with the Survey of Professional Forecasters.

Date: 2009-11-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-for and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Published

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/fi ... ers/iser/2009-32.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: “Google it!”Forecasting the US Unemployment Rate with a Google Job Search index (2010)
Working Paper: "Google it!" Forecasting the US unemployment rate with a Google job search index (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ese:iserwp:2009-32

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK
https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/publications/

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ISER Working Paper Series from Institute for Social and Economic Research Publications Office, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jonathan Nears ().