Establishment Data

Employment and Earnings, July, 2001

("B" tables)

DATA COLLECTION

BLS cooperates with State Employment Security Agencies in the Current Employment Statistics (CES) or establishment survey to collect data each month on employment, hours, and earnings from a sample of nonfarm establishments (including government). This sample includes about 350,000 reporting units. From these data, a large number of employment, hours, and earnings series in considerable industry and geographic detail are prepared and published each month. Historical statistics are available at http://www.bls.gov, the BLS Internet site.

Each month, BLS and the State agencies collect data on employment, payrolls, and paid hours from a sample of establishments. Data are collected by touchtone data entry (TDE) from most respondents. Under the TDE system, the respondent uses a touchtone telephone to call a toll-free number and activate an interview session. The questionnaire resides on the computer in the form of prerecorded questions that are read to the respondent. The respondent enters numeric responses by pressing the touchtone phone buttons. Each answer is read back for respondent verification.

For establishments that do not use TDE, data are collected mostly by mail, FAX, or Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), or on magnetic tape or computer diskette. Computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) is used for a small number of respondents (5 percent). BLS is also pilot testing reporting via the World Wide Web. Chart 1 shows the percentages of the establishments using different data collection methods.

Chart 1: Distribution of CES sample by
collection mode

FAX/EDI/WEB     11%
Mail            16%
CATI             5%
TDE             61%
Tape/diskette    7%

Note: Table made from a pie chart.

All reports are edited by the State agencies each month to make sure that the data are correctly reported and that they are consistent with the data reported by the establishment in earlier months. The State agencies forward the data to BLS-Washington. They also use the data to develop State and area estimates of employment, hours, and earnings. At BLS, the data are edited again by computer to detect processing and reporting errors that may have been missed in the initial State editing; the edited data are used to prepare national estimates.

CONCEPTS

Industrial classification

Establishments reporting on Form BLS 790 are classified into industries on the basis of their principal product or activity, as determined from information on annual sales volume. Since January 1980, this information has been collected on a supplement to the quarterly unemployment insurance tax reports filed by employers. For an establishment making more than one product or engaging in more than one activity, the entire employment of the establishment is included under the industry indicated by the principal product or activity.

All data on employment, hours, and earnings for the Nation (beginning with August 1990 data) and for States and areas (beginning with January 1990 data) are classified in accordance with the 1987 Standard Industrial Classification Manual (SIC), U.S. Office of Management and Budget.

Industry employment

Employment data, except those for the Federal Government, refer to persons on establishment payrolls who received pay for any part of the pay period that includes the 12th day of the month. For Federal Government establishments, employment figures represent the number of persons who occupied positions, either full- or part-time, on the last day of the calendar month or the last day of the last full pay period of the calendar month. Intermittent Federal Government workers are counted if they performed any service during the month. Agencies are required to consistently report employment data on either a calendar month basis or pay period basis. The only exception to this rule occurs at the end of the fiscal year when all agencies are required to report data as of September 30th.

The data exclude proprietors, the self-employed, unpaid volunteer or family workers, farmworkers, and domestic workers. Salaried officers of corporations are included. Government employment covers only civilian employees; military personnel are excluded. Employees of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, also are excluded.

Persons on establishment payrolls who are on paid sick leave (for cases in which pay is received directly from the firm), on paid holiday, or on paid vacation, or who work during a part of the pay period even though they are unemployed or on strike during the rest of the period are counted as employed. Not counted as employed are persons who are on layoff, on leave without pay, or on strike for the entire period, or who were hired but have not yet reported during the period.

Indexes of diffusion of employment change. These indexes measure the dispersion among industries of the change in employment over the specified timespan. The overall indexes are calculated from 353 seasonally adjusted employment series (3-digit industries) covering all nonfarm payroll employment in the private sector. The manufacturing diffusion indexes are based on 136 3-digit industries.