Increases in the size of the SNAP caseload during the early 2000s were associated with increases in the unemployment rate and with a number of policy changes made to the program in many states. A series of six measures to better understand employment trends developed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, three of which are more conservative estimates of unemployment and three of which define it more broadly, all showed correlations with SNAP participation. In particular, it was suggested that longer-term unemployment results in the heaviest utilization of SNAP benefits.