(Most of this information has been lifted from the home pages of the relevant surveys.)

Covered Employment and Wages Program (ES-202)
Current Employment Statistics (CES)
Current Population Survey (CPS)
General Social Survey (GSS)
National Household Education Survey (NHES)
National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS)
Occupational Employment Statistics (OES)
Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
Unemployment Insurance (UI) Claims Statistics

Note: Some of the links below are broken and I'll try to fix them when I get a chance to find the right ones.

The Covered Employment and Wages Program, commonly referred to as the ES-202 program, is a cooperative program involving the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) of the U.S. Department of Labor and the State Employment Security Agencies (SESAs). The ES-202 program produces a comprehensive tabulation of employment and wage information for workers covered by State unemployment insurance laws and is a virtual census of payroll employment. Available data include estimates of the number of establishments, monthly employment, and quarterly wages by industry (at the 4-digit Standard Industrial Classification level). This information is tabulated for the United States as a whole and by county and ownership sector.

A main difference between this employment program and the CPS is that the ES-202 program is establishment based and provides information with about a one-year lag, whereas the CPS is household based and provides data about 3 weeks after collection. For more information on the ES-202 program, call (202) 606-6567.

The Current Employment Statistics (CES) program, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, collects data on employment (number of jobs), hours of work, and hourly and weekly earnings from a sample of about 390,000 establishments each month. Data are first released in The Employment Situation and are later published in more detail in Employment and Earnings. Estimates are made for the total nonfarm economy and over 500 detailed industries. The reference period is the payroll period that includes the 12th of the month.

Estimates of employment from the CES survey are lower than those from the CPS because of differences in coverage. While CPS employment includes all persons age 16 years and older in the civilian noninstitutional population who worked during the reference week, the CES count is a total of the number of persons on payrolls of nonagricultural establishments (persons on more than one payroll are counted multiple times). CES employment counts are limited to wage and salary workers on the payrolls of those establishments. By contrast, the CPS includes agricultural employment, and self-employed, private household and unpaid family workers. Both the CPS and the CES exclude military personnel. More information on the CES is available from the Division of Monthly Industry Employment Statistics at (202)-606-6555.

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of about 50,000 households conducted by the Bureau of the Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The survey has been conducted for more than 50 years.

The CPS is the primary source of information on the labor force characteristics of the U.S. population. The sample is scientifically selected to represent the civilian noninstitutional population. Respondents are interviewed to obtain information about the employment status of each member of the household 15 years of age and older. However, published data focus on those ages 16 and over. The sample provides estimates for the nation as a whole and serves as part of model-based estimates for individual states and other geographic areas.

Estimates obtained from the CPS 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 to produce estimates 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.

CPS data are used by government policymakers and legislators as important indicators of our nations's economic situation and for planning and evaluating many government programs. They are also used by the press, students, academics, and the general public.

The General Social Survey (GSS) has been conducted by the National Opinion Research Center annually since 1972 except for the years 1979, 1981, and 1992 (a supplement was added in 1992), and biennially beginning in 1994. For each round of surveys, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research prepares a cumulative dataset that merges previous years of the GSS into a single file, with each year or survey constituting a subfile.

The content of each survey changes slightly as some items are added to or deleted from the interview schedule. Main areas covered in the GSS include socioeconomic status, social mobility, social control, the family, race relations, sex relations, civil liberties, and morality.

Topical modules designed to investigate new issues or to expand the coverage of an existing subject have been part of the GSS since 1977 when the first module on race, abortion, and feminism appeared. The topical modules for 1998 focused on the themes of mental health, religion, national security, worker training and culture. Other topics covered have included

• gender, emotions, market exchange, giving and volunteering, and mental health (1996)
• family mobility and multiculturalism (1994)
• cultural issues (1993)
• work organizations (1991)
• intergroup relations (1990)
• occupational prestige (1989)
• religious socialization, behaviors, and beliefs (1988)
• sociopolitical participation (1987)
• the feminization of poverty (1986)
• social networks (1985), and
• the role of the military (1982 and 1984).

The GSS also added a crossnational component in 1985, through participation in a multinational collaborative group called the International Social Survey Program (ISSP). Topics addressed have included

• religion and work orientation (1998)
• the role of government (1985, 1990, and 1996)
• social support (1986)
• social inequality (1987)
• family and gender issues (1988 and 1994)
• work orientation (1989)
• the impact of religious background, behavior, and beliefs on social and political preferences (1991)
• environmental issues (1993), and
• national identity (1996).

In 1994, two major innovations were introduced to the GSS. First, the traditional core set of questions was substantially reduced to allow for the creation of mini-modules (small- to medium-sized supplements). The mini-modules permit greater flexibility to incorporate innovations and to include important items proposed by the social science community. Second, a new biennial, split-sample design was instituted, consisting of two parallel subsamples of approximately 1,500 cases each. The two subsamples contain identical cores and different topical ISSP modules.

(Note: GSS data is very easy to download from their web-site, and will come ready to read into SAS, SPSS, or Stata complete with variable and label definitions. -- cbu)

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) is a data collection system of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) that is designed to address a wide range of education-related issues. It provides descriptive data on the educational activities of the U.S. population and offers policymakers, researchers, and educators a variety of statistics on the condition of education in the U.S.

The NHES has been conducted in the springs of 1991, 1993, 1995, and 1996. An end-of-decade NHES collection will take place in 1999. The survey will be conducted periodically thereafter. The NHES collects data on high priority topics on a rotating basis. Although the primary purpose of the NHES is to conduct repeated measurements of the same phenomena at different points in time, one-time surveys on topics of interest to the Department of Education may also be fielded. Extensive family and child background characteristics, including parent language and education, income, receipt of public assistance, and household composition, have been collected since 1993 to permit the identification of at-risk children. The 1999 NHES will provide updated indicators on a range of topics surveyed in the 1990's.

The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS), sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, are a set of surveys that have gathered information at multiple points in time on a variety of socioeconomic items including the labor market experiences of five groups of American men and women. The sample of each survey was selected to be representative of all Americans born during a given time period such that conclusions drawn about the sample group would be generalizable, when weighted, to the experiences of the larger population of like Americans. Sample selection procedures insured that the labor market dilemmas of non-whites, youth, women, and the economically disadvantaged could be examined. Specific areas of inquiry related to the labor market have included: school-to-work transitions, retirement trends, lifetime work experience, employer training, and occupational choices. The NLS also provides information on socioeconomic variables that are not as directly related to labor market experience. For information, contact Michael Pergamit at (202) 606-7386.

The Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey provides occupational employment statistics by industry. These data are collected annually by the State Employment Security Agencies (SESA's) then processed and published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The OES survey covers wage and salary workers in approximately 725,000 nonfarm establishments in 400 detailed industries. The survey runs on a 3-year survey cycle with manufacturing industries surveyed in the first year and nonmanufacturing industries surveyed during the second and third years. The 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa participate in the survey. Occupational employment estimates by industry are available at the national, state, and area levels.

The OES survey differs from the CPS both in methodology and classification. And, the OES survey is an establishment survey which counts the total number of jobs in a given occupation, whereas the CPS is a survey of households that measures the number persons employed by occupation. Persons holding 2 jobs (or more) would be counted twice (or more) in the OES data, but only once (the job in which one works the most hours) in the CPS. The industry and occupational classification systems used by the two surveys also differ.

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is a longitudinal, nationwide survey administered by the Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan. Based on a representative sample of individuals and the families in which they reside, the PSID began in 1968 with approximately 4,800 white and black households. Members formed additional families over the years, so that by 1990, the sample had expanded to 7,300 households. The sample was further augmented by the addition of 2,043 Latino (Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican) households in 1990.

The PSID provides a variety of economic and demographic information concerning year-to-year changes in sources and levels of income, marital status, and family composition. In addition, the PSID data is used to derived detailed information on changes in individuals' work activities and labor force status throughout the past year. When used for cross-sectional analysis, much of the PSID data is similar to that in the Current Population Survey (CPS). For additional information, see The Panel Study of Income Dynamics, A User's Guide, by Martha S. Hill, SAGE Publications, Inc., Newbury Park, California, 1992. The co-directors of the PSID are Sandra Hofferth and Frank Stafford (313-763-5166).

The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) is a household survey of about 8,000 housing units per month conducted by the Census Bureau. The SIPP is used to examine income sources of individuals and families, participation in entitlement programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and the correlations between these items and individual attachments to the job market over time. While the CPS measures labor force status at a single point in time, the SIPP interviews determine persons' work experiences week-by-week over the previous 4 months. Also, definitions of employment and the labor force are slightly different in the two surveys; as a result, SIPP tends to pick up fewer employed and more unemployed persons than the CPS. For information, contact Judy Eargle at (301) 457-3230.

Unemployment Insurance Claims Statistics (UI) are prepared by the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) of the Department of Labor and are based on data supplied by State Employment Security Agencies (SESA's). This program provides estimates of the total number of eligible persons filing claims for benefits as well as the number of people making their initial claims for benefits. Excluded from the UI claims estimate are a) persons who exhausted their benefits, b) workers who do not have benefit rights (such as persons let go for cause and unemployed reentrants to the labor force), and c) eligible workers not filing claims.

About 90 % of U.S. workers participate in the UI program Major groups of workers excluded from UI coverage include all members of the Armed Forces and unpaid family workers, as well as elected officials in most states, and some railroad employees, domestic service workers, workers attending schools, and employees of certain small nonprofit organizations and religious organizations. While not covered by the UI program, if these workers (exc. members of the armed forces) were to become unemployed--that is, they were both available for and seeking work--they would be included in the CPS unemployment figures. Unemployment insurance claims questions can be directed to ETA at 202-219-6871.