diff --git a/scrapy/extensions/spiderstate.py b/scrapy/extensions/spiderstate.py
index 3799c7c66..2220cbd8f 100644
--- a/scrapy/extensions/spiderstate.py
+++ b/scrapy/extensions/spiderstate.py
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ import os
 from six.moves import cPickle as pickle
 
 from scrapy import signals
+from scrapy.exceptions import NotConfigured
 from scrapy.utils.job import job_dir
 
 class SpiderState(object):
@@ -12,7 +13,11 @@ class SpiderState(object):
 
     @classmethod
     def from_crawler(cls, crawler):
-        obj = cls(job_dir(crawler.settings))
+        jobdir = job_dir(crawler.settings)
+        if not jobdir:
+            raise NotConfigured
+
+        obj = cls(jobdir)
         crawler.signals.connect(obj.spider_closed, signal=signals.spider_closed)
         crawler.signals.connect(obj.spider_opened, signal=signals.spider_opened)
         return obj
diff --git a/tests/test_spiderstate.py b/tests/test_spiderstate.py
index d83015bd9..d1d6debec 100644
--- a/tests/test_spiderstate.py
+++ b/tests/test_spiderstate.py
@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@ from twisted.trial import unittest
 
 from scrapy.extensions.spiderstate import SpiderState
 from scrapy.spiders import Spider
+from scrapy.exceptions import NotConfigured
+from scrapy.utils.test import get_crawler
 
 
 class SpiderStateTest(unittest.TestCase):
@@ -34,3 +36,7 @@ class SpiderStateTest(unittest.TestCase):
         ss.spider_opened(spider)
         self.assertEqual(spider.state, {})
         ss.spider_closed(spider)
+
+    def test_not_configured(self):
+        crawler = get_crawler(Spider)
+        self.assertRaises(NotConfigured, SpiderState.from_crawler, crawler)