A week ago, I posted a question here about pulling historical data from the BLS's Local Area Unemployment data. Two updates.

First, I found a solution. I found the file I wanted from the text-files tab, and because of the doc size, I copied the data into a txt using the command line. Then I converted from long to wide format and added a key to more easily join to other Census data. Since it's government data which was a pain to prep, I should probably push it to somewhere like dataverse or github. Open to suggestions.

Second, this quote is the reason why I looking to pull the data before the election:

Counties where the unemployment rate has risen since 2016 also saw turnout in the low 40s, compared with 53 percent in counties where unemployment has dropped.

Article: Midterm Election Turnout Was Up. How Much? We Don’t Yet Know.