Unemployment Rate Grounding Data

Overview

Unemployment Rate provides annual unemployment data from the World Bank, based on ILO (International Labour Organization) modeled estimates. The data covers virtually every country in the world and is updated annually. Use this for economic analysis, country comparisons, and labor market research. With changes=true each reading is set against the country's own stored history: the direction of the move for every plan, and on paid plans the previous year and its rate, the change in percentage points over one and five years, and the highest, lowest and average rate over the five years ending at the reading.

Live Test Unemployment Rate Grounding Data Source →

The tool

Once your client is connected to the VerveContext server, this appears in its tool list as UnemploymentRateGroundingData. It is read-only and open-world — it fetches and never mutates anything on your side — so most clients call it without asking you to confirm.

{
  "name": "UnemploymentRateGroundingData",
  "arguments": {
    "country": "USA"
  }
}

You do not name the tool yourself; the model picks it. Asking about USA in the terms this source covers is enough for it to reach for UnemploymentRateGroundingData on its own — naming it explicitly also works, and is the way to force the call.

Connecting

One server URL covers every source in the catalog, including this one. Authorization is OAuth: the client opens a browser once, and there is no key to paste into a config file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vervecontext": {
      "url": "https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp"
    }
  }
}

https://api.vervecontext.com/v1/mcp

Per-client setup — Claude, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT — is on the MCP setup page.

Arguments

These are the properties on the tool's inputSchema, so a well-behaved client validates them before the call is made. Premium arguments are accepted on every plan but only take effect on plans that include them.

What the model gets back

The result carries a structuredContent object matching the tool's declared outputSchema, so a client reads fields without parsing prose. status is "ok" and error is null on success; a null field means the value was not available for that input, not that the call failed.

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{
  "status": "ok",
  "error": null,
  "data": {
    "country": "USA",
    "countryName": "United States",
    "year": 2025,
    "count": 1,
    "historical": [
      {
        "year": 2025,
        "rate": 4.2
      }
    ],
    "previousYear": 2024,
    "changeDirection": "up",
    "previousRate": 4.02,
    "change1y": 0.18,
    "change5y": -3.85,
    "high5y": 5.35,
    "low5y": 3.64,
    "average5y": 4.172
  },
  "code": 200
}

Response fields

Paths are relative to data. Premium fields are absent rather than zeroed on plans that do not include them, so check for presence instead of comparing to 0.

Why ground on it

A model can produce something that looks like this answer from its training data, and be confidently out of date or simply wrong. This source returns the current value in a shape you can check, which is the difference between an answer you can cite and one you have to hedge.

Point an evaluation at countryName: it is the field most worth pinning a claim to, and it is either present and current or absent — never plausibly invented.

Failure modes

Errors come back as tool errors carrying a sentence the model can act on, not a bare status code. Error handling covers the full list.

A call costs 2 credits each time the tool actually runs; a model that reasons about the tool without calling it costs nothing.

Use cases

Economic Analysis

Analyze unemployment trends to understand economic health and labor market conditions

Country Comparison

Compare unemployment rates across different countries and regions

Historical Research

Track unemployment changes over time to study economic cycles and policy impacts

Investment Research

Factor unemployment data into investment decisions and economic forecasting

Other ways to use Unemployment Rate Grounding Data

Set up Unemployment Rate Grounding Data on VerveContext, or reach the same source a different way. Your VerveContext account and credits work on all of them — one key, one balance.

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