Survey of Unemployed Workers in New Jersey

The goal of this survey is to learn more about how unemployed workers spend and experience their time over their spell of unemployment. In addition, the survey aims at finding out more about how unemployed people search for jobs. For that purpose, unemployed workers were invited to participate in the study each week for a period of up to 12 weeks, and the long-term unemployed were surveyed for an additional 12 weeks. The survey is distinguished from past studies by the use of high-frequency longitudinal data on time use, job search activity and job offers. This unique data promises new insights into the process of job search and job finding, as it makes it possible to track time spent on job search activities over the spell of unemployment. The data for this survey were collected in the fall of 2009 and the beginning of 2010. The appendix in Krueger and Mueller (2011) describes in detail the survey design and methodology.