|
DESCRIPTION: The Current Population Survey ( CPS ) is conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics
on a monthly basis. The survey has been conducted for more than 50 years.
The primary purpose of the CPS is to gather information on the labor force of the U.S. population. The stratified sample is
selected to represent the civilian noninstitutional population.
The CPS topics include employment, unemployment, earnings, hours of work, and other indicators. They are available by a variety
of demographic characteristics including age, sex, race, marital status, and educational attainment. They are also available
by occupation, industry, and class of worker. Supplemental questions on a variety of topics including school enrollment, income,
previous work experience, health, employee benefits, and work schedules are also often added to the regular CPS questionnaire.
The CPS basic monthly files contain information on labor force status but do not contain the full income and demographic data
contained in the CPS Annual Demographic Files (March Supplements), nor do they contain usual hours or wages except for the
households in the outgoing rotation group.
SURVEY DESIGN: Approximately 50,000 households participate in the survey. Some 3,200 of these households are contacted but
interviews are not obtained because the residents are not available at home after repeated calls. This represents a noninterview
rate for the survey that ranges between 6 and 7 percent. There are 9,000 sample units in an average month, other than the
50,000 occupied units, which are visited but found to be unoccupied or otherwise not qualified for interview. A housing unit
in the CPS is interviewed for four consecutive months and then dropped out of the sample for the next eight months and is
brought back in the following four months. Thus, in any given month, one-eighth of the housing units are interviewed for the
first month. When the system has been in operation for a full year, four of the eight rotation groups for any month will have
been in the survey for the same month, one year ago.
Although respondents are interviewed to obtain information about the employment status of each member of the household 15
years of age and older, published data focus on those ages 16 and over. The sample offers estimates for the nation as well
as for individual states and other geographic areas.
CODEBOOKS: Codebooks of the CPS Annual Demographic File (March Supplement) are available on the local area network for the
most recent years (2003 and 2004) (T\Public\Data\ CPS ).
There are multiple codebooks for each year starting from since 1962 available from the National Bureau of Economic Research
(NBER) ( http://www.census.gov/cps/ ). Codebooks and questionnaires can also be obtained from the CPS website ( http://www.census.gov/cps/ ).
DATA : Data are available for the following periods: 1976-1988, 1989-1993, 1994-1997, and 1998-2004. The data are "zipped"
files ( .raw.Z, .dat.Z) but can be uncompressed with WinZip . SAS, SPSS , and Stata data definition statement files for 1989
on are also available.
WEBLINKS: Additional information about the study is available at the CPS website ( http://www.census.gov/cps/) and from NBER ( http://www.nber.org/data/cps.html ).
UPCOMING RELEASES: New data and documentation releases are posted on the CPS website.
|
