I am trying to figure out if there is a way to pull quarterly income trends and unemployment rates out of the ASEC. Do the different whatchmacallums – rotation groups – report their income and employment status for different periods as they roll through through the ASEC frame? Or is there any subperiodization in ASEC Income and employment status variables?
I assume I could get quarterly employment status by linking with the monthlys, but I am actually interested in trying to figure out if there is any way to compare periodicity and lags of business-cycle frequency income movements with same-frequency employment movements based on micro data. All the analysis of this I have ever seen on this relies on the NIPAs for income, but I suspect that there is a story in the micro data – if it exists – that you can not pick up that way.
If I were prepared to use earnings data rather than income data – which would not be my first choice, but I might settle for it – am I correct in thinking that earnings data is not collected often enough in the monthlies to get quarterly estimates (especially assuming I want a long baseline)? Or again, is there some way to use the rotation groups to trick quarterly data out of the monthlies, even though earnings measurement is at a lower frequency?