I’m trying to estimate people who were in the labor force the previous year using the ASEC sample. I’m having the issue that there are a number of people who, for example, are coded as “2” for WKSWORK2 (worked 14-26 weeks last year), but are also coded as “9” in WKSUNEM2 (not in universe). However, the universe for WKSUNEM2 is listed as “Persons aged 15+ who worked between 1 and 51 weeks last year”. Thus, according to the value for WKSWORK2, these people should be in the universe for WKSUNEM2.
Is this just a record error, or I am doing something wrong? Interestingly, this problem only appears in ASEC surveys from 2014-2019 (this issue doesn’t arise in 1962-2013 as far as I’ve found).
Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!
Our IPUMS CPS team is looking into this; in the meantime, I would suggest using/recoding the single week versions of the variables (WKSUNEM1 and WKSWORK1).
Thank you! I’m using the intervalled estimates because I’m trying to compare workers from 1962-2019, and the single week versions are only available for later samples.
I have received confirmation from our IPUMS CPS team that this is an error; these cases should be in universe and have a value of 0. We are working on implementing a fix for this and will deploy it with the next IPUMS CPS release. In the meantime, you can correct the issue in 2014-2019 by recoding WKSUNEM2 to 0 if WKSUNEM1 is equal to 0 and WORKLY is equal to 2. As a thank you for helping us improve IPUMS CPS data, we would love to send you an IPUMS mug. Please email ipums@umn.edu with a mailing address where we can ship this token of our appreciation.
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