Does IPUMS omit the variable distinguishing veterans’ last period of service (or any periods of service) from the monthly basic CPS?
The historical data for CPS Table A-5 (Table A-5. Employment status of the civilian population 18 years and over by veteran status, period of service, and sex, not seasonally adjusted) shows that this data is available monthly, but neither VETLAST nor VET1/VET2/VET3/VET4 is available with the basic monthly data on IPUMS.
Would one have to use data directly from the BLS or from NBER in order to access these variables?
Thanks for your advice.
Information about veteran’s last period of service was indeed collected in the CPS basic monthly samples, however, it has not been integrated into IPUMS CPS and there are no immediate plans to include it (though it is on our radar and it will eventually be integrated). We do offer unharmonized basic monthly sample versions of VET1-4 for 2006 to 2009: UH_VET1_B1, UH_VET2_B1, UH_VET3_B1, UH_VET4_B1, which will be expanded to include 2010 - 2021 samples with the next CPS release in October. If you need this information for the 2010 - 2021 samples before the October release, you will need to get the data directly from BLS or NBER. (see this blog post on linking IPUMS CPS data to the NBER CPS files).
Grace thank you for your response to my question about the veterans data in the monthly samples. I’ve been using the unharmonized variables since the October 2021 update. However, it appears that all four variables (uh_vet1_b1 uh_vet2_b1 uh_vet3_b1 uh_vet4_b1) are missing for year 2014. This omission seems like an oversight and I wanted to let you/IPUMS know. Or, if I’m wrong, I hope you could show me how to find them under a different variable name. Thanks for your time.
Grace is currently out on leave, but I can answer your question. I created an extract with all four unharmonized variables for the 2014 monthly data and am seeing these variables (and responses to them) in both my data file and displayed in the frequencies on the website (see screenshot below). My best recommendation is to review your extract definition and ensure you have selected the 2014 monthly samples for inclusion. Please let me know if I have misunderstood the issue you are describing.
If you are still not seeing these variables, please email ipums@umn.edu for more targeted troubleshooting support.
Thank you! I just downloaded a “revised” extract with no revisions and the data is there now. Not sure what happened in the original from November but I appreciate your time.
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