COVID-19's Impact on Business
Resources and strategies for researching the impact of the novel-coronavirus on businesses and the economy.
Guide Contents
These resources can be used to help research and stay current on the impact of COVID-19 on consumer behavior, company earnings, the stock market, supply chains, etc.
- COVID-19 Related Business Data
- Business News
- Industries
- Organizations
- Financial Markets & the Economy
- Employees & Consumers
- Stanford GSB Faculty Analysis
Business Research Librarian
COVID-19 Related Business Data
Below are links to datasets that are or may be freely available to academic researchers. Some data may need to be requested directly from the provider.
Members of the Stanford community can always Ask Us for additional recommendations.
Navigation
Employment | Consumers | Financial Markets | Mobility | COVID-19 Cases | Internet Usage
View ideas of where to find COVID-19 related business data.
Employment Data
This is a mix of traditional employment sources (e.g. Department of Labor) and other datasets that have been released in the wake of COVID-19. View a quick primer on interpreting official unemployment figures.
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Homebase | The Real-Time Impact COVID-19 is Having on Small Businesses and WorkersContinually updated. Insights using Homebase's data as a provider of "free employee scheduling, time clock, and hiring tools."
To access more detailed data, please contact us. -
US Department of Labor | Weekly Unemployment Insurance Claims Data"The Unemployment Insurance weekly claims data are used in current economic analysis of unemployment trends in the nation, and in each state. Initial claims measure emerging unemployment and continued weeks claimed measure the number of persons claiming unemployment benefits."
Download most recent Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report. -
US Bureau of Labor Statistics | Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Employment and Unemployment StatisticsLinks to BLS datasets available to study COVID-19s effect on employment, including: Current Employment Statistics Survey, Current Population Survey, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, Local Area Unemployment Statistics, American Time Use Survey, and Employment Projections.
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OECD | Unemployment RateThe OECD collects unemployment rate data from countries around the world. Sometimes you can get data quicker and / or more detailed if you get it directly from an individual country's government, such as this example for Germany's unemployment data as of April 2020. See also the paper Jobs Numbers Across Countries Since COVID-19 for an example of how this data can be used.
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Layoffs.tech | Explore Layoffs Map"Explore live updates of layoffs happening due to COVID-19. Data is collected by tips submitted to the Layoff List and public reports. Due to our geographic location we mostly focus on layoffs happening in North America but we accept tips from all over the world."
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Layoffs.fyi | Coronavirus Tracker"Tracking all tech startup layoffs — and opt-in lists of employees laid off — since the coronavirus was declared a pandemic. Data is compiled primarily from public reports."
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SF Chronicle | Bay Area Layoff TrackerSearchable database that includes company name, number of layoffs, and city. Other fields being collected are: county, month, industry, and brief company description.
Additional Resources
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Economic Indicators GuideLinks to Stanford datasets and databases with a variety of economic indicators.
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Opportunity Insights | Economic TrackerLeading economic researchers combine multiple large datasets to provide insights into "the economic impacts of COVID-19 on people, businesses, and communities across the United States in real time."
Consumers
The following can be used to investigate how the pandemic has and is shaping consumer spending or expenditure.
Consumer & Household Experiences & Attitudes
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U.S. Census Bureau | Household Pulse Survey"The Household Pulse Survey is designed to deploy quickly and efficiently, collecting data to measure household experiences during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic." Examples include measuring how many households reported a loss of employment income, food scarcity, delayed medical care, etc.
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YouGov | COVID-19 Tracker"Data repository for the Imperial College London YouGov Covid 19 Behaviour Tracker Data Hub."
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Harris Poll COVID-19 TrackerEvery few weeks Harris Poll conducts a survey making it easy to track changing attitudes over time.
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Hedonometer | Time Seires of Happiness: Twitter - EnglishA graph of how "happy" Twitter users are, based on analyzing English language Tweets.
Additional Resources
The following links provide commonly used resources at Stanford for researching consumers. Most will have information specific to COVID-19.
Purchases
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Consumer Technology Association | Weekly CTA Tech Use and Purchase Tracker: COVID-19 ImpactContinually updated. "Monitors consumer usage and purchases across technology categories, including online services and devices, during the COVID-19 pandemic."
Consumer Goods Prices, Housing Prices, etc.
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US Bureau of Labor Statistics | Consumer Price Index"The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a measure of the average change over time in the prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services."
Financial Markets Data
See all of our databases that have information on financial markets. Because there are so many options and all have slightly different pros and cons, contact us for guidance on the best source for your needs.
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Financial Markets DatabasesA list of Stanford databases and datasets that provide data on financial markets.
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Library Knowledge Base | Tag: Financial MarketsAll Stanford GSB Library Knowledge Base entries about financial markets.
Mobility Data
Below are a variety of datasets and reports focused on the movement of people in the US (mostly collected by map-related apps on smartphones).
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SafeGraph | Reopening the Economy: Foot Traffic Patterns Across the U.S.SafeGraph does provide free access to COVID-19 related data for academic researchers. Datasets specifically related to COVID-19 are: Economy Reopening, Shelter in Place, Foot Traffic Impact, and Weekly Patterns.
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Google | COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports"The reports chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential."
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Apple | Maps Mobility Data"You can download the complete data set, which features daily changes in requests for directions by transportation type for all available countries/regions, sub-regions, and cities."
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Facebook | COVID Mobility Data NetworkIncludes publicly available tools: High Resolution Population Density Maps, CrowdTangle, and COVID-19 Live Displays. Also includes tools for nonprofits & researchers: Disease Prevention Maps and Social Connectedness Index.
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Uncast | COVID-19 Location Data ToolkitContinually updated. Uncast collects human mobility data from cell phones and has a focus on retail data.
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Citymapper | Citymapper Mobility IndexContinually updated. Using data from the Citymapper app to see how usage of the mobility app has changed around the world in recent weeks.
COVID-19 Cases
The following are a selection of data sources for tracking coronavirus cases.
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C3.ai COVID Data Lake"The C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake uniquely integrates multiple data sources in a unified data model, ready for analysis – not just a list of links or a collection of data sets...Access data at no charge with any utility that supports RESTful APIs."
This is a great place to get COVID-19 data (infection rates, mobility data, etc.) to either see connections between the already linked data or use the data source list to dig deeper into specific datasets. -
2019 Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Epidemic"The coronavirus package provides a tidy format dataset of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) epidemic. The raw data pulled from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CCSE) Coronavirus repository."
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NYT | Coronavirus Case Counts"An ongoing repository of data on coronavirus cases and deaths in the U.S."
Internet Use
Another area that has seen dramatic changes during the pandemic has been internet use. The following sources provide data on internet usage around the world.
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Broadband Now | ReportsReports released approximately weekly with data on internet speed and performance. Mostly focused on the US with some global data.
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Kasper Datahaus | Global Internet Pressure"KASPR Datahaus’ Global Internet Pressure Map shows the effect of covid19 on local Internet Infrastructure. The map was created using measurements on the differences in the speed of internet packets traveling between the US and destinations regions reveal the pressure of the new tele-work reality." Mentioned in Hidden data is revealing the true scale of the coronavirus outbreak from Wired on March 20, 2020.
Additional Resources
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IT Industry Research GuideLists Stanford resources that could be used to find additional reports or data on how COVID-19 is impacting IT resources, internet use, etc.
Finding COVID-19 Related Data
Below are some places you can go to browse or search for datasets related to business-focused COVID-19 research.
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ICPSR | COVID-19 Data Repository"The COVID-19 Data Repository is a repository for data examining the social, behavioral, public health, and economic impact of the novel coronavirus global pandemic."
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NBER | New This Week: The Latest NBER Working PapersUpdated each Monday. Working papers from the National Bureau of Economic Research. While not exclusively focused on the coronavirus, many recent papers are exploring the economic impacts of this and similar crises.
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USA Facts | Coronavirus Stats & DataGet ideas for how U.S. government datasets can be used to better understand the impact of coronavirus on businesses and the economy.
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United States Census Bureau | COVID - 19 Demographic and Economic ResourcesGet ideas, graphics, and links to complete datasets available from the Census Bureau that could be used to study COVID-19's impact.
About this Guide
Access Note: This site includes links to some resources only available to current Stanford faculty, staff, and students. If you are not a current Stanford affiliate and a link doesn't work for you, check your local library to see if you have access to the resource.
For medical and public health information about COVID-19 and its spread, please see other great resources provided by the CDC.
Questions? Ask Us.