Identifying regions at risk with Google Trends: the impact of Covid-19 on US labour markets

Key takeaways

• Information on local labour markets and Google searches can be used to construct a measure of the vulnerability of employment in different regions of the United States to the Covid-19 shock. 
• Regional exposure to Covid-19 varies significantly, ranging from a low of 2% to a high of 98% of total local employment.
• We test for the usefulness of the Covid-19 exposure measure by showing that areas with higher exposure report more Google search queries related to the pandemic and unemployment benefits.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the BIS.