You signed in with another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You signed out in another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.You switched accounts on another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.Dismiss alert
{{ message }}
Repository navigation
Track income-flow integration for state UI programs #8301
State unemployment insurance programs are now being added as state-specific compute-only variables, starting with Pennsylvania UC and followed by New Jersey and New York UI.
The open modeling question is how and when those state-specific modeled benefits should feed the shared unemployment_compensation income variable, which then flows into taxable unemployment compensation, SPM income, and other downstream aggregates.
This needs a shared design because the program inputs are not simple annual income fields:
PA UC uses high-quarter wages, base-year wages, credit weeks, weekly earnings, and weeks unemployed.
NJ UI uses qualifying base weeks, base-period wages, weekly wages, and claimed weeks.
NY UI uses high-quarter wages, second-highest-quarter wages, base-period wages, quarters with wages, weekly hours, weekly earnings, and weeks unemployed.
Naively deriving these from annual survey income could impose distributional assumptions that change eligibility and benefit amounts. For example, a uniform annual-to-quarterly allocation can fail or distort quarter-based monetary eligibility tests.
Scope for this follow-up:
Decide whether state UI programs should auto-populate unemployment_compensation, remain opt-in model variables, or feed a separate state-benefit aggregate.
Define an allocation/data-input pattern for annual microsimulation data.
If integration is approved, update unemployment_compensation or the appropriate aggregate for all state UI implementations consistently.
Add tests covering downstream taxable unemployment compensation and household/SPM income flows.
Opened #8303 to address the merged-program side of this follow-up.
Design choice: keep unemployment_compensation as the canonical income-flow variable and add modeled state UI variables to its adds list. This avoids deriving quarterly or weekly eligibility inputs from annual unemployment income. The PR wires the merged PA program (pa_uc) into taxable UI, household benefits, and SPM benefits. Once NJ and NY are merged, their program variables can be appended to the same adds list.
Activity
daphnehanse11 commentedon May 14, 2026
Opened #8303 to address the merged-program side of this follow-up.
Design choice: keep
unemployment_compensationas the canonical income-flow variable and add modeled state UI variables to itsaddslist. This avoids deriving quarterly or weekly eligibility inputs from annual unemployment income. The PR wires the merged PA program (pa_uc) into taxable UI, household benefits, and SPM benefits. Once NJ and NY are merged, their program variables can be appended to the sameaddslist.