Is there a way to separate self-employed individuals with no employees using FIRMSIZE?

CPS
1

I want to separate self-employed individuals into two categories: own-account workers, and self-employed owner-manager with employees. I found that in CPS ASEC, variable FIRMSIZE reports the number of employees. However FIRMSIZE only has categories for NIU, Under 10, 10-24 etc. Can I intepret NIU as without any employee?? If not, is there a way to do so?

PS. I saw that in another question (Variable FIRMSIZE vs NOEMP from the CPS), differences between FIRMSIZE and NOEMP were asked. I tried to find variable NOEMP, but couldn’t. Is this variable deleted for some reason?

Thanks!

1 Like
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Unfortunately, it is not possible to identify self-employed respondents with no paid employees using IPUMS-CPS or publicly available CPS data. The “NIU” category for FIRMSIZE includes respondents under the age of 15 and anyone who did not work in the past year. Therefore, it would be incorrect to interpret “NIU” as self-employed respondents with zero employees. Self-employed persons with no paid employees are included in the “Under 10” category.

The IPUMS-CPS variable FIRMSIZE corresponds to the variable NOEMP found in the original CPS data. It was renamed to FIRMSIZE in our integration process.

Hope this helps.

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Thank you!! Do you know anyother sources of US data that has information that separate zero employees with more than one employees?

Thanks!

4

The Survey of Business Owners and Self-Employed Persons (SBO) is a great source for data on self-employment. There is a PUMS file currently available for 2007 (see here), and it appears the Census will release the 2012 PUMS file later this summer. There are questions in this survey that indicate whether or not a self-employed person has any part-time or full-time employees.

Hope this helps.

5

Thank you so much!!! That’s super helpful!!