Abstract
This thesis examines whether the early termination of federal pandemic unemployment insurance programs accelerated local labor-market recovery in the United States. In mid-2021, 21 states ended federal pandemic UI programs three months before their scheduled expiration, creating policy variation across states. I use a contiguous border county-pair design to compare neighboring counties across state borders that were exposed to different UI termination policies, combining county-level data from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics and the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. I find that early UI termination is associated with a statistically significant decline in the unemployment rate, suggesting some movement from unemployment into employment. However, this decline does not translate into a comparable increase in the employment-to-population ratio, labor-force participation rate, establishment counts, payroll employment, or wages. Industry-level results also do not show a strong employment rebound in labor-intensive sectors, where the labor-supply response would be expected to be largest. Overall, the findings suggest that early pandemic UI termination affected unemployment margins, but did not generate a broad local business recovery. The evidence is more consistent with modest, uneven labor-market adjustment and possible sectoral reallocation than with a sharp hiring boom.