Using newly digitized unemployment insurance claims data we construct a historical monthly unemployment series for U …-level unemployment data, which are only available from January 1976 onwards, and capture consistent patterns in the business cycle. We … use our claims-based unemployment series to examine the evolving pace of post-war unemployment recoveries at the state …

, unemployment remained high. In this paper, we show that countercyclical unemployment benefit extensions lead to jobless recoveries …. We augment the standard Mortensen-Pissarides model to incorporate unemployment benefits expiration and state …-dependent extensions of unemployment benefits. In the model, an extension of unemployment benefits slows down the recovery of vacancy …