The Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators: Bridging the Gap with Alternative Labor Data

2026

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This paper introduces the Chicago Fed Labor Market Indicators (LMI), a novel twice-monthly release that bridges the gap between traditional and alternative labor market data to provide timely insights into the U.S. labor market.

* The LMI combines official statistics with higher-frequency alternative and traditional data to estimate job-finding and job-separation rates.
* It generates a flow-consistent unemployment rate (FCR) and a real-time forecast for the official BLS unemployment rate.
* The LMI's real-time unemployment rate forecast outperforms common benchmarks, especially during periods of rapid labor market change.

Tags: labor market, unemployment, alternative data, forecasting, Chicago Fed

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