UNEMPLOYED as FEC employer text: $21.4 million

A labor-status word ranked as an industry

LobbyVault’s industry table is a ranking of whatever text committees stored in the employer/occupation box. UNEMPLOYED is a status phrase, not a factory, a union, or a ticker. The $21,382,057 total is the sum of itemized individual gifts whose grouped employer text matches that word. It is not unemployment insurance outlays, not a Census labor-force estimate, and not a committee’s own PAC spending.

The same people could have written NOT EMPLOYED, RETIRED, HOMEMAKER, or left a committee’s best-efforts placeholder. Those strings are other rows. A donor who typed UNEMPLOYED on one receipt and RETIRED on a later receipt appears in each row only for the receipts that carry that exact stamp.

2,545 donors and 62,616 lines

The rollup counts 2,545 unique donors and 62,616 contribution lines totaling $21,382,057. That is roughly 25 itemized receipts per donor in this string, a paperwork pattern consistent with recurring online gifts rather than a one-time payroll deduction. The packet does not publish party share, cycle years, or a mean ticket; this page cites the three headline figures only.

Compared with NOT EMPLOYED’s separate, much larger dollar pile, UNEMPLOYED is a smaller spelling. Committees and form software do not force one phrase. LobbyVault does not recode UNEMPLOYED into NOT EMPLOYED, and it does not fold either into RETIRED.

What the donor table shows

The UNEMPLOYED donor table lists disclosed names, amounts, and recipient committees attached to this string. Repeat names are expected: 62,616 lines from 2,545 people means many people gave more than once. A large gift on that table is a public individual contribution. It is not evidence of motive, and it is not a statement that the person was unemployed in the BLS sense on election day.

Occupation pages remain the companion view when the occupation box says something else while the employer box says UNEMPLOYED. Students, caregivers, retirees who chose this wording, and people between jobs can all generate the same eight letters.

Placeholders and sibling status strings

N/A, REQUESTED, INFO REQUESTED, and INFORMATION REQUESTED PER BEST EFFORTS mean the committee did not obtain a usable employer. Those rows are missing-data labels, not this status. UNEMPLOYED is an affirmative word a filer stored. It is not folded into those placeholders, and the placeholders are not folded into $21,382,057.

HOMEMAKER, STUDENT, VOLUNTEER, and RETIRED are additional self-descriptions with their own industry pages. Cross-walking them into a single “out of the workforce” total would mix strings the FEC stored separately.

Source and coverage

FEC.gov via LobbyVault reports $21,382,057, 62,616 contributions, and 2,545 donors for the UNEMPLOYED employer string, with UNEMPLOYED also listed as the top employer value inside the cluster. Unitemized gifts under the federal itemization threshold, state-level filings, and independent-expenditure committees are outside this total.

Follow recipient committees from the donor table for party and office detail. This page does not assign a partisan percentage to the label. The industry ranking is FEC employer/occupation self-reports, not NAICS.

Itemization, repeats, and what $21,382,057 leaves out

Federal itemized receipts are the only dollars in the $21,382,057 UNEMPLOYED total. Gifts below the itemization threshold never appear, even if the donor would have written UNEMPLOYED on a longer form. State-level filings, ballot-measure committees outside FEC coverage, and independent-expenditure ads that do not carry this individual-employer string are also omitted. The 62,616 contribution lines are therefore a floor on paperwork, not a ceiling on all money that people without a current payroll job might have given.

The 2,545 unique-donor count is the other side of that paperwork. Recurring itemized programs can post weekly or monthly while still counting as one person. A researcher who divides $21,382,057 by 2,545 or by 62,616 is doing arithmetic the packet does not publish as an official FEC field. This page cites the three headline figures and the filing pattern they imply — many lines per person — without treating a quotient as a disclosed average ticket.

Occupation pages remain the companion view when the occupation box says student, retired, none, or homemaker while employer says UNEMPLOYED. Those occupation words also exist as industry keys when they were placed in the employer box. NOT EMPLOYED (space), NOT-EMPLOYED (hyphen), RETIRED, HOMEMAKER, and VOLUNTEER still sit on their own pages. Placeholders such as REQUESTED mean the committee lacked a usable employer; they are not folded into UNEMPLOYED. Open the UNEMPLOYED donor table for names and committees. Open the industry index to compare other status strings. Source: FEC.gov via LobbyVault, employer/occupation self-reports, not NAICS and not the BLS unemployment rate.

Questions

How much have UNEMPLOYED-listed donors given federally?

LobbyVault attributes $21,382,057 to the UNEMPLOYED employer string, from 62,616 contributions and 2,545 donors. These are itemized individual receipts, not a BLS unemployment series and not a NAICS sector. Unitemized gifts and non-federal filings are omitted from that figure. Figures on this answer are limited to that FEC employer string as indexed on LobbyVault; unitemized gifts and non-federal filings are omitted.

Is UNEMPLOYED the same as NOT EMPLOYED in FEC data?

No. They are different self-reported strings. NOT EMPLOYED is a separate industry row with its own dollar total. A receipt stamped UNEMPLOYED is counted only here; a receipt stamped NOT EMPLOYED is counted only there. LobbyVault does not merge the two spellings.

Does this count every unemployed American who donated?

No. Only itemized federal receipts whose employer text grouped to UNEMPLOYED are in the $21,382,057 total. People who wrote other status words, left placeholders, or gave unitemized amounts are elsewhere or omitted. The 2,545 donor count is unique contributors in this string, not a labor-force headcount.

Why are there more contributions than donors?

The 62,616 contribution lines include repeat gifts from the same 2,545 people. Recurring itemized donations raise the receipt count without adding new unique donors. The FEC field records each itemized transaction, not a once-per-person census. Figures on this answer are limited to that FEC employer string as indexed on LobbyVault; unitemized gifts and non-federal filings are omitted.