Discrepancy between WORKLY and CLASSWLY or UHRSWORKLY in CPS ASEC

CPS
1

Dear IPUMS community,

Examining the relation between WORKLY and CLASSWLY in CPS ASEC samples of 1988-2017 I noticed that they are tens of thousands of cases that did not work last year (workly=1) but are still in the universe of classwly (i.e., they answered this question and coded anywhere between 13 and 29). According to the universe tab of classwly only persons who worked last year should be answering this question.

I should note that these cases are not military personnel (popstat~=2) and older than 14.

Since CLASSWLY and UHRSWORKLY are almost perfectly correlated so that only cases with reported hours are coded between 13 and 29 in classwly and both have the same universe, the same discrepancy exists between UHRSWORKLY and WORKLY (cases with reported hours of work last year are coded as “did not work last year” (workly=1)).

What am I missing here? Any specific characteristic of these cases that explains these responses?

Thank you very much for your help, time and effort!

2

You are not missing anything, this is an error. Thanks for bringing it to our attention. The IPUMS CPS Team has fixed this error and these changes should be reflected on the website by the end of the week.

We like to reward users who inform us about errors with a free IPUMS coffee mug. To claim yours please email ipums@umn.edu with your mailing address and we will send one to you as soon as possible.