Does ATUS have information on the employment status of the respondent’s spouse?
Yes, you can find spouse characteristics, including SPEMPSTAT, the employment status of a spouse or partner, here. Additionally, when creating your extract, if you have included EMPSTAT as one of your variables, you can choose to “attach characteristics”, which will include an option to attach spouse/partner employment status.
Would it be possible to find out if the spouse is self-employed or not?
There are no ATUS variables that provide information about the spouse’s employment class (whether or not they were self-employed) at the time of the ATUS interview. ATUS spouse employment status variables do not break down employment by employment type. The dichotomous variable SPEMPNOT reports whether or not the spouse is employed and the more detailed variable SPEMPSTAT reports the employment status of the spouse with additional information (whether or not they were at work, if they are retired or disabled, etc.).
ATUS variable CLWKR_CPS8 reports the class of worker status at the time of the eighth CPS interview (2-5 months before the ATUS interview) for all CPS household members who were employed. By leveraging the attach characteristics feature, it is possible to include the spouse’s CLWKR_CPS8 on their own person record.