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Administrative Data for Measurement and Analysis

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Summit on Workforce Valuation & Performance

Ross School of Business

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Matthew D. Shapiro

Professor, Economics Department; Director, Survey Research Center

University of Michigan

May 11, 2023

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Government survey data on employment

Monthly surveys

  • Current Population Survey (60,000 households)
    • Labor force participation
    • Employment and unemployment
    • Both employees and self-employed
  • Current Employment Statistics (all large firms, sample of smaller firms)
    • Employment, wages, and hours
    • Payroll employment only

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Government administrative data:�Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD)

  • Micro data: Individual jobs at (firm x worker)-level
  • What’s measured:
    • Employment
    • Monthly earnings
    • Demographics: Age, sex, race, foreign-born; education (imputed)
  • Who’s measured:
    • Employment covered by Unemployment Insurance (UI)

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Government administrative data:�Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD)

  • How measured:
    • UI Payroll reports to states
      • Worker-level monthly earnings (reported quarterly)
      • Census combines reports from state UI agencies
    • Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW)
    • Census Bureau adds demographic information
      • Age, sex, race from Social Security card application
      • Education from other Census surveys

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�Examples of LEHD in Action:�Job-to-Job Flows�

  1. the job-to-job transition rate,
  2. hires and separations to and from employment,
  3. earnings changes due to job change,
  4. characteristics of origin and destination jobs for job-to-job transition

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These statistics are available at the national, state, and metropolitan area levels and by worker and firm characteristics. �

https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/#j2j

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Job-to-Job Flows from 50 States to Michigan �(2021 Q3)

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Quarterly earnings in Michigan

Stayers

New hires:

Job to job

New hires:

From persistent

unemployment

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�LEHD Challenges/Limitations

  1. Timeliness: Most recent data currently is 2021
  2. Integration: Complications from merging data from state UI agencies

Data path: Firms 🡪 State agencies 🡪 Census Bureau

  • Limitation of variables
    1. Earnings, not wages or hours
    2. No data on occupation
  • Limitations of scope
    • Employees
    • UI covered workers

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Future of administrative data for official statistics:�Re-engineering

Data collection

APIs connected to business information system replace surveys and enumerations

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Data integration

Combine administrative data from multiple sources

E.g., payrolls, tax information reports (W-2, 1099)

Combine survey and administrative data

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Future of workforce: �Key use-case for data integration

Employees: Payrolls

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Contractors/Gig Workers: Tax data

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Multiple jobs: Surveys and linked administrative data

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Differences in employment between household and establishment data: Major puzzles

Multiple job holder in UI data,

1 job in CPS

Multiple job holder in CPS,

1 job in UI data

Source: Katharine G. Abraham, John Haltiwanger, Kristin Sandusky, James R. Spletzer Journal of Labor Economics (April 2013).

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Future of administrative data for official statistics:�Collective action problem

Businesses

    • Need to demand better statistics
    • Need to supply timely and granular information from information systems

Government

    • Statistical system distributed over multiple agencies
    • Technological and human-capital challenges of implementing 21st century statistics

Preserving privacy and confidentiality while sharing data

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