Labor market statistics are critical for assessing and understanding economic development. In practice, widespread variation exists in how labor statistics are measured in household surveys in low-income countries. Little is known whether these differences have an effect on the labor statistics...

With the beginnings of a worldwide burgeoning development of matched firm-employee data, it is worthwhile to examine the possibilities for using these data. This essay discusses a variety of areas in which some progress has been made and presents ideas for future research in a number of others,...

The U.S. labor market experienced a more than 20 percent reduction in the share of workers holding multiple jobs over the past 20 years. While this substantial trend is receiving increasing attention, the literature lacks a comprehensive picture of the gross worker flows that underlie the...

This paper documents that rotation group bias – the tendency for labor force statistics to vary systematically by month in sample in labor force surveys – in the Current Population Survey (CPS) has worsened considerably over time. The estimated unemployment rate for earlier rotation groups...

Hours worked is an important economic indicator. In addition to being a measure of labor utilization, average weekly hours are inputs into measures of productivity and hourly wages, which are two key economic indicators. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics' two hours series tell very...

This paper looks behind the standard, publicly available employment and unemployment statistics that studies of transition economy labor markets have typically relied upon. We analyze microdata on detailed labor force survey responses in Russia, Romania, and Estonia to measure nonstandard,...

We consider the possibility that demographic variables are measured with errors which arise because household surveys measure demographic structures at a point-in-time, whereas household composition evolves throughout the survey period. We construct and estimate sharp bounds on household size...

Measuring occupational mobility from the Current Population Survey using recall (retrospective) or linked panel responses (longitudinal) generates substantially different outcomes, both in levels and trends. Using a generalized method of moments technique, we estimate the actual level of...

The March Current Population Survey (CPS) is the primary data source for estimation of levels and trends in labor earnings and income inequality in the USA. Time-inconsistency problems related to top coding in theses data have led many researchers to use the ratio of the 90th and 10th...

Response rates to important surveys used in social science research have been falling precipitously over the last few decades, raising questions about the representativeness of the resulting data and the quality of evidence that comes from it. We examine how partisan preferences influence...