I am trying to find the unemployment rates on US county level or SEA level of the years 1968 to 1988. But I didn’t find these data, could you please help me with it? Thank you!
The Current Population Survey sampled approximately 150,000 people each year between 1968 and 1988, making the data representative at the national and state level but not at a more granular level. Further, SEA is not available through the CPS, and COUNTYis only available beginning in 1995.
It is possible to calculate unemployment through the 1970, 1980, and 1990 Decennial Censuses, which are housed at IPUMS-USA. COUNTY is not identifiable from public-use data from 1950 onward, but it is possible to recover some counties from low-level geographic identifiers. You can find a link to a list of identifiable counties on the COUNTY codes page.
If aggregate data will suit your needs, then you have a couple of options. First, the NHGIS project offers many of the official Census tables going back to 1790 at several geographic levels, including county. Second, the Census’ American FactFinder site is another source for Census tables at the county level.
I hope this helps.
It helps! Thank you, Erin.