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Introducing the Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators
On September 23, 2025, we debuted the Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators. Updated twice per month, this new data release provides an early read on U.S. labor market conditions: The Chicago Fed Real-Time Unemployment Rate Forecast is a forecast of the U.S. civilian unemployment rate while the Chicago Fed Layoffs and Other Separations Rate and the Chicago Fed Hiring Rate for Unemployed Workers provide further context for the job flows that influence the unemployment rate. In this article, we describe these new indicators and provide additional analysis for their first release for September ...
Working Paper
The Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators: Bridging the Gap with Alternative Labor Data
We present the Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators (LMI): a twice-monthly release that includes the job-finding rate, the job-separation rate, and a forecast for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) unemployment rate. To overcome limitations in data availability, the LMI uses partial least squares to combine CPS-based finding and separation rates with higher-frequency alternative and traditional labor market data series—such as unemployment insurance claims, Google Trends searches, online job postings, and survey-based indicators. Our resulting flow-consistent unemployment rate (FCR) ...