Industry Employment Discrepancy Between 1990 5% State Sample and Paper Census Report

USA
1

Hi all,

I am working on a project analyzing shifts in warehousing employment in Northern New Jersey between 1970 and 2000. As a part of this, I have been using IPUMS USA data to get estimates of the changing racial composition of this labor force. I downloaded an extract from the following samples:

|1970 1% metro fm2|1.0%||
|1980 5% state|5.0%||
|1990 5% state|5.0%||
|2000 5%|5.0%||

With the following variables:

[snipped default variables]

H [COUNTYFIP] County (FIPS code) –
|P|RACE (general)|Race [general version]|–|
|P|RACED (detailed)|Race [detailed version]|–|
|P|HISPAN (general)|Hispanic origin [general version]|–|
|P|HISPAND (detailed)|Hispanic origin [detailed version]|–|
|P|IND1990|Industry, 1990 basis|–|
|P|INCWAGE|Wage and salary income|–|
|P|INCWAGE_CPIU_2010|Wage and salary income [standardized using CPIU_2010]|–|
|P|TRANWORK|Means of transportation to work|–|

And filtered the extract to be for the Newark, NJ MSA only.

Once imported into R, I further filtered to 1990 industry codes 410-411 (truck transport and warehousing) in Essex County (FIPS 013), and summed to get an estimate of employment based on the PERWT variable. The analysis showed total transport/warehousing employment of about 9,600, or 50% more than the paper census report’s estimate of 6,700. What might explain this discrepancy? I checked the paper census definitions and they, too, used industry categories 410-411 to create their trucking/warehousing group.

Thank you in advance!

2

I used the online analysis tool for a quick comparison and I am matching the reported estimate pretty closely. I suspect that you haven’t filtered by currently employed. In 1990, IND1990 is asked of people aged 16+ who worked in the previous 5 years (and are not new workers); this means that people who are currently unemployed or out of the labor force may be included in IND1990. See my cross-tab of IND1990 values of 410-411 by EMPSTAT, restricted by detailed METAREA = 5605, STATEFIP = 34, and COUNTYFIP = 13. I get 6,830 employed person in this industry, which is pretty close to the published estimates; however, all EMPSTAT values total to the ~9,600 you calculated.

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