. "Appendix A Overview of Current Data Collections." Understanding Business Dynamics: An Integrated Data System for America's Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2007.
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Understanding Business Dynamics: An Integrated Data System for America’s Future
Current Employment Statistics (CES) [also known as Payroll Establishment Survey]
Purpose/uses
Provides employment, hours, and earnings estimates based on payroll records. Provides first economic indicator of current economic trends each month (with unemployment rate).
Design basics
Based on a sample of about 400,000 business establishments (160,000 firms). The LDB, stratified by state, industry, and employment size, serves as the sampling frame.
Frequency
Monthly
Unit level
Establishment
Coverage
Payroll employment for establishments in nonagricultural industries (over 1,150 industries). Hours and earnings data are collected from SESAs for about 850 industries.
Content
Total employment, full address, number of women employed, number of production or nonsupervisory workers, average hourly earnings, average weekly hours, average weekly earnings, and average weekly overtime hours in manufacturing industries.
Limitations or lag time
As with QCEW, there is no nonemployer, self-employed, or farm coverage, and no detailed owner or small firm characteristics. Geographic coding is available only by MSA. Establishments are not tracked over time and multiple jobholders are overrepresented.
Accessibility of data
Electronic access to selected indicator data is available. Microdata are not publicly available. Researcher can apply for access to the confidential microdata.
American Time Use Survey (ATUS)
Purpose/uses
Collects information on how people in the United States spend their time, including kinds of activities and time spent doing them. Used in preparation of BLS press releases and to produce categorical time use tables on ATUS web site.
Design basics
Sample frame is drawn from households that have completed their final month of interviews for the CPS, utilizing a stratified, 3-stage sample.
Frequency
Data have been collected since 2003, and they are published annually.
Unit level
Individual (household)
Coverage
Civilian noninstitutional population and workers ages 16 and over. For 2004 and 2005, approximately 27,000 cases yielded about 13,500 completed interviews; the survey was roughly 50% larger in 2003. Diaries are used to capture data spent on various activities.
Content
Data are collected on major activity categories (work, sleep, eating, etc.) and on selected variables such as earnings, school enrollment, selected demographics, household, labor force characteristics, and hours worked. There is also a self-employment identifier.
Limitations or lag time
Little information is collected on secondary activities (those done in combination with other activities) not collected. Estimates subject to nonsampling errors, particularly if nonresponse is correlated with time use.
Accessibility of data
Published tables and microdata files available on the ATUS web site.
