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 help you research the impact of COVID-19 on business-related topics.
- COVID-19 Related Business Data
- Business News
- Industries
- Organizations
- Small Businesses
- Financial Markets & the Economy
- Consumers
- Work
- 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.
On This Page
Employment | Policies | Mobility | COVID-19 Cases | Internet Use
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."
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US Department of Labor | Weekly Unemployment Insurance Claims Data"Initial claims measure emerging unemployment and continued weeks claimed measure the number of persons claiming unemployment benefits."
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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."
Policy Trackers
While most of these sites haven't released a raw dataset, it may be possible to get access to the underlying data to use for academic analysis.
U.S. State / Local / Regional Policies
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Kaiser Family Foundation | State Data and Policy Actions to Address Coronavirus"State-level information on: social distancing measures, health policy actions to reduce barriers to COVID-19 testing and treatment,...[and] testing and provider capacity."
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Multistate | COVID-19 Policy Tracker"View our dashboard, maps, and other resources for tracking how states and localities are responding to the crisis."
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Stateside | State and Local Government Responses to COVID-19 Report"Includes State Legislation, Executive Orders and local actions conveniently broken down by state." Actions include paid leave proposals, mandated business closures, etc.
Country Policies
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International Labor Organization | Country Policy Responses"COVID-19 Country policy responses are presented within the four pillars of action defined by the ILO to lessen the impact of COVID-19 on businesses, jobs and the most vulnerable members of society."
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International Air Transport Association | Travel Regulations MapNote: This data cannot be scraped. Researchers must contact Timatic to see if and how it could be used for an academic project.
Business Policies
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JUST Capital | COVID-19 Corporate Response Tracker"Explore corporate policies and practices via the blue “tags.” You can also search by policy, company, industry, the estimated number of employees, and date updated."
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Stanford Law School | COVID-19 Memo Tracker"A searchable index of the COVID-19-related memorandum generated by each [law] firm listed in the Resources Database."
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.
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Foresquare | Recovery IndexContinually updated. "Foursquare location data reliably and accurately reveals these changes in visitation in near real-time, helping you understand and plan for the recovery process. "
COVID-19 Cases
The following are a selection of data sources for tracking coronavirus cases.
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C3.ai COVID Data LakeThis 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.
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2019 Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) EpidemicA tidy format dataset of the COVID-19 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"Shows the effect of covid19 on local Internet Infrastructure...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."
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.