Description

UCNOMAIN reports what respondents identified as the main reason they had not applied for unemployment compensation since their last job.

See the Unemployment Compensation Supplement notes for more information on using this dataset.

Comparability

The number of possible reasons for not applying for unemployment compensation has varied greatly over the years. In the 1989-1990 supplements there were 8 possible response options. In the 2005 supplements the number of options was expanded to 25, however many of these options were more detailed variations of the previous 8 options. In 2018, the number of options was condensed to 13. IPUMS CPS has compressed highly detailed response codes so that there are 8 possible codes for each year. Codes that appear in only one year have been recoded as "Other." For users that wish to use the data in the original format, unharmonized variables have been made available.

Universe

Flags

Unharmonized Variables

• UH_NOUCAPP_S1
• UH_PRRSNAPM_S1