Hello, I’m attempting to calculate the total workforce in NYC using PWCOUTY data. I’ve noticed a significant number of zeroes in the PWCONTY variable, which has resulted in an unexpectedly low total. Considering that NYC’s workforce should exceed 4 million, the total I derived from the 2022 ACS 5-year data seems incorrect. I see that the PWCOUNTY variable is now available, so I assumed that the updates were complete. Please let me know if I’m mistaken about this.
Thanks for your message. We are also seeing some inconsistencies in PWCOUNTY in the 2022 5-year, and are taking a closer look. I will update you once we have more definitive information.
I am following up on my question. Do you have any update re the PWCOUNTY variable?
Thanks!
Thanks for following up–I can confirm there is an issue. We discovered that the incorrect values were being input to the PWCOUNTY variable; we were erroneously using place-of-residence PUMAs instead of place-of-work PUMAs in the 2022 5-year data. As a note, this issue also affects PWMET13, PWMET13ERR and the migration variables (MIGCOUNTY1, MIGMET131, MIGMET131ERR) in the 2018-2022 5-year. We are working to update these variables and re-release them as soon as possible (I was hoping to have a release date before updating the post, but expect it will be in the coming week). I will also update this thread once the corrected versions of these variables have been released.
As a thank you for helping us uncover and address this error, we would like to send you an IPUMS mug. Please email ipums@umn.edu with a mailing address where we can send this small token of our appreciation.
Updated versions of PWCOUNTY, PWMET13, PWMET13ERR, MIGCOUNTY1, MIGMET131, and MIGMET131ERR are now available via IPUMS USA. Thank you again for flagging this issue.
Thank you for the update!
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