Following the recent hurricanes, the U.S. Virgin Islands have been unable to provide UI claims data to the federal government (among other interruptions to statistical programs). In response, the U.S. Employment and Training Administration (ETA) has estimated the count; however, these estimates are not included in the standard subnational data file, so we are unable to harvest them for Data Buffet. Upon our inquiry, ETA provided their formula so that we can compute the USVI value ourselves (that is, we "reconstitute" the ETA values).

We have now implemented this calculation within our monthly harvest process. To document the change, the series now carry a secondary source citation and notation of "Moody's Analytics Calculated [From Nov2017]." (Although the ETA calls this an "estimate," it is not a "Moody's Analytics Estimate.")

The series reside in the historical catalog (United States » Labor markets » Unemployment Insurance Claims » Unemployment insurance claims (ETA)) and include, for example:

• XUIGMM.VI     = Insured unemployment - Male, (#, NSA) - for USVI
• XUIOINAM.VI = Insured unemployment by occupation: Information not available

This new policy supersedes:

• Data Note: U.S. - UI claims for Puerto Rico and USVI (Oct. 2017)
• Data Delay: U.S. - UI claims for U.S. and USVI (Nov. 2017)

See also:

• Data Note: U.S. Virgin Islands - Hurricanes Irma and Maria
  
• Data Note: U.S. subnational - BLS CES and CPS [Nov. 2017] - Puerto Rico and USVI (Dec. 2017)