Hi all,
I want to replicate this table A38 of the BLS:
https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.htm
Here, I can not find the variables
Thank you very much in advance!
You are correct that the CPS asks respondents who are not in the labor force whether they want a job each month as part of the Basic Monthly Survey (BMS); however, currently IPUMS CPS has only harmonized the ASEC samples for this question in the variable WANTJOB (see the availability tab for WANTJOB). Since the ASEC is fielded in March of each year, WANTJOB cannot be used to replicate estimates for any other months (such as the July estimates in the table you link).
However, the responses to this question in the BMS are available in the unharmonized variable UH_NLFWANT_B1, which corresponds to the original CPS variable PRWNTJOB (see the 2024 CPS BMS codebook). Similarly, the unharmonized variable UH_LOOK12_B1 corresponding to the original CPS variable PEDWLKO records whether the respondent looked for work at any time in the past 12 months. When using unharmonized CPS variables, users should review documentation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (such as the codebooks) for key information like the codes and universes for the variable as well as any changes to these variables over time that may affect their analysis. I will suggest to the IPUMS CPS team that expanding WANTJOB to include BMS samples would be useful.
Note that when replicating month-to-month published BLS labor force estimates, you will also want to use the person-level weight COMPWT. When tabulating weighted observations by UH_NLFWANT_B1, I obtained an estimate of 5,581,570 persons who Want a Job in July 2023 and 5,959,261 such persons in 2024 (see screenshot from a tabulation using Stata below). These estimates are within a few thousand of the ones in the linked tables. Researchers should expect some discrepancy within the estimate’s margin of error since the public use microdata file that IPUMS CPS obtains contains perturbations in the data that protect respondent confidentiality. There may also be additional criteria used to calculate this statistic by the BLS that I am not aware of. The note regarding passive jobseekers appears to simply indicate that the true number of persons who want a job is not obtainable using CPS data because the survey doesn’t ask every respondent whether they wanted a job and hence misses some groups such as passive jobseekers.
