Household Data

Employment and Earnings, July, 2001

COLLECTION AND COVERAGE

Statistics on the employment status of the population and related data are compiled by BLS using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS). This monthly survey of households is conducted for BLS by the U.S. Census Bureau through a scientifically selected sample designed to represent the civilian noninstitutional population. Respondents are interviewed to obtain information about the employment status of each member of the household 16 years of age and older. The inquiry relates to activity or status during the calendar week, Sunday through Saturday, that includes the 12th day of the month. This is known as the "reference week." Actual field interviewing is conducted in the following week, referred to as the "survey week."

Each month, about 50,000 occupied units are eligible for interview. Some 3,200 of these households are contacted but interviews are not obtained because the occupants are not at home after repeated calls or are unavailable for other reasons. This represents a noninterview rate for the survey that ranges between 6 and 7 percent. In addition to the 50,000 occupied units, there are about 9,000 sample units in an average month that are visited but found to be vacant or otherwise not eligible for enumeration. Part of the sample is changed each month. The rotation plan, as will be explained later, provides for three-fourths of the sample to be common from one month to the next, and one-half to be common with the same month a year earlier.

CONCEPTS AND DEFINITIONS

The concepts and definitions underlying labor force data have been modified, but not substantially altered, since the inception of the survey in 1940; those in use as of January 1994 are as follows:

Civilian noninstitutional population. Included are persons 16 years of age and older residing in the 50 States and the District of Columbia who are not inmates of institutions (for example, penal and mental facilities, homes for the aged), and who are not on active duty in the Armed Forces.

Employed persons. All persons who, during the reference week, (a) did any work at all (at least 1 hour) as paid employees, worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family, and (b) all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs.

Each employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job. For purposes of occupation and industry classification, multiple jobholders are counted in the job at which they worked the greatest number of hours during the reference week.

Included in the total are employed citizens of foreign countries who are temporarily in the United States but not living on the premises of an embassy. Excluded are persons whose only activity consisted of work around their own house (painting, repairing, or own home housework) or volunteer work for religious, charitable, and other organizations.

Unemployed persons. All persons who had no employment during the reference week, were available for work, except for temporary illness, and had made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week. Persons who were waiting to be recalled to a job from which they had been laid off need not have been looking for work to be classified as unemployed.

Duration of unemployment. This represents the length of time (through the current reference week) that persons classified as unemployed had been looking for work. For persons on layoff, duration of unemployment represents the number of full weeks they had been on layoff. Mean duration is the arithmetic average computed from single weeks of unemployment; median duration is the midpoint of a distribution of weeks of unemployment.

Reason for unemployment. Unemployment also is categorized according to the status of individuals at the time they began to look for work. The reasons for unemployment are divided into five major groups: (1) Job losers, comprising (a) persons on temporary layoff, who have been given a date to return to work or who expect to return within 6 months (persons on layoff need not be looking for work to qualify as unemployed), and (b) permanent job losers, whose employment ended involuntarily and who began looking for work; (2) Job leavers, persons who quit or otherwise terminated their employment voluntarily and immediately began looking for work; (3) Persons who completed temporary jobs, who began looking for work after the jobs ended; (4) Reentrants, persons who previously worked but who were out of the labor force prior to beginning their job search; and (5) New entrants, persons who had never worked. Each of these five categories of the unemployed can be expressed as a proportion of the entire civilian labor force; the sum of the four rates thus equals the unemployment rate for all civilian workers. (For statistical presentation purposes, "job losers" and "persons who completed temporary jobs" are combined into a single category until seasonal adjustments can be developed for the separate categories.)