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Working Paper
The Implications of Labor Market Heterogeneity for Unemployment Insurance Design
Birinci, Serdar; See, Kurt (2026-01-23)
We estimate unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility, take-up, and replacement rates at the individual level and document how they vary with earnings, wealth, and unemployment duration. We extend a widely used framework that combines an incomplete-markets model with a frictional labor market to match our findings. We show that the optimal UI policy becomes substantially more generous. The gap between optimal policies in the two models is largely driven by endogenous UI take-up, which entails a utility cost: only those who value UI the most choose to take it. The welfare gains from insuring ...
Working Papers , Paper 2024-026

Discussion Paper
Changes in State Unemployment Insurance Rules during the COVID-19 Outbreak in the U.S.
Xie, Zoe (2020-04-14)
The COVID-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented expansion in unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility across states. While more than forty states had modified UI rules by the end of March, not all states responded in the same way. In this article, I summarize the changes to state UI rules in response to the crisis and explore factors that have contributed to the variation in states’ responses.
Policy Hub , Paper 2020-2

Working Paper
Uncovering the Differences among Displaced Workers: Evidence from Canadian Job Separation Records
See, Kurt; Birinci, Serdar; Pugh, Thomas; Park, Youngmin (2023-10)
We revisit the measurement of the sources and consequences of job displacement using Canadian job separation records. To circumvent administrative data limitations, conventional approaches address selection by identifying displacement effects through mass-layoff separations, which are interpreted as involuntary. We refine this procedure and find that only a quarter of mass-layoff separations are indeed layoffs. Isolating mass-layoff separations that reflect involuntary displacement, we find twice the earnings losses relative to existing estimates. We uncover heterogeneity in losses for ...
Working Papers , Paper 2023-022

Working Paper
The Heterogeneous Impacts of Job Displacement: Evidence from Canadian Job Separation Records
See, Kurt; Birinci, Serdar; Park, Youngmin (2024-11-13)
When estimating earnings losses upon job separations, existing strategies focus on mass-layoff separations to distinguish involuntary separations from voluntary separations. We revisit the measurement of the sources and consequences of involuntary separations using Canadian job separation records. We refine existing strategies and find that only a quarter of mass-layoff separations are indeed layoffs. Isolating mass-layoff separations that reflect involuntary displacement, we find twice the earnings losses relative to existing estimates. We also uncover significant heterogeneity in losses for ...
Working Papers , Paper 2023-022

Working Paper
Enhanced Unemployment Insurance Benefits in the United States during COVID-19: Equity and Efficiency
Valletta, Robert G.; Yilma, Mary (2024-05-06)
We assess the effects of the historically unprecedented expansion of U.S. unemployment insurance (UI) payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. The adverse economic impacts of the pandemic, notably the pattern of job losses and earnings reductions, were disproportionately born by lower-income individuals. Focusing on household income as a broad measure of well-being, we document that UI payments almost completely offset the increase in household income inequality that otherwise would have occurred in 2020 and 2021. We also examine the impacts of the $600 increase in weekly UI benefit payments, ...
Working Paper Series , Paper 2024-15

Report
The Great Resignation and Optimal Unemployment Insurance
Cai, Zhifeng; Heathcote, Jonathan (2023-10-16)
How generous should social insurance be when quits account for a large share of transitions into non-employment? We address this question using a multi-sector directed search model extended to incorporate endogenous quits both to other jobs and to non-employment. Workers quit too often in the competitive equilibrium, and private markets co-ordinate on excessively high “efficiency” wages. Quantitatively, we find that unemployment insurance is optimally much less generous in an economy with quits than in one without. An extended Baily-Chetty formula is derived to illustrate the source of ...
Staff Report , Paper 652

Journal Article
Federal Enhancements to Unemployment Insurance Supported Tenth District Incomes in 2020
McCoy, John (2021-09-08)
Federal supplements to state unemployment insurance mitigated income losses from COVID-19-related disruptions across the country. In the Tenth Federal Reserve District, many workers who lost jobs had their wages at least fully replaced by federally supported unemployment insurance. In some district states, total income—the sum of unemployment benefits and wages earned from employment—exceeded levels that might have been observed in the absence of the pandemic.
Economic Bulletin

Working Paper
Racial Inequality in Unemployment Insurance Receipt and Take-Up
Kuka, Elira; Stuart, Bryan (2022-03-24)
This paper studies differences in receipt and take-up of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits among White and Black individuals. We combine state-level UI regulations with data containing detailed information on individuals’ work history and UI receipt. Black individuals who separate from a job are 24% less likely to receive UI than White individuals. The UI receipt gap stems primarily from lower take-up of UI benefits among likely eligible individuals, as opposed to differences in benefit eligibility. Statistical decompositions indicate that about one-half of the take-up gap is explained ...
Working Papers , Paper 22-09

Working Paper
How Should Unemployment Insurance Vary over the Business Cycle?
See, Kurt; Birinci, Serdar (2020-01-01)
We study optimal unemployment insurance (UI) over the business cycle using a heterogeneous agent job search model with aggregate risk and incomplete markets. We validate the model-implied micro and macro labor market elasticities to changes in UI generosity against existing estimates, and provide an explanation for divergent empirical findings. We show that generating the observed demographic differences between UI recipients and non-recipients is critical in determining the magnitudes of these elasticities. We find that the optimal policy features countercyclical replacement rates with ...
Working Papers , Paper 2019-022

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