Disproportionately Observations with 119 weeks of Unemployment Duration (durunemp)

CPS
1

Hi,

I wonder why so many unemployed individuals in the CPS have an unemployment duration of 119 weeks. In fact, between 2018 - 2022, 1.82% of all unemployed individual-month observations report a duration of 119 weeks (frequency = 2,685). These are also the observations usually having inconsistency issues - either with the unemployment duration in the previous/next month, or with the previous month’s employment status.

Thanks!

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2

I also could not find the unharmonized variable for unemployment duration. Based on the CPS manual, it should be the LKDR variables.

3

Thanks for pointing this out. It appears that 119 is an undocumented topcode for duration of unemployment. I will ask the IPUMS CPS team to make a note of this in the variable documentation.

Regarding unharmonized variables, it looks like the variable for the post-2009 period has not been added to IPUMS CPS. I will let the team know that this is missing.

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