Self-employed but in large firm?

CPS
1

Hi Tim –

I have been using CLASSWKR to identify self employed workers (CLASSWKR=13 or =14). I just ran a cross-tab using FIRMSIZE and see that both incorporated and non-incorporated self-employed workers vary across firm size. While most are at firms with fewer than 10 employees, a substantial number have 50, 100, and even 1000+ employees. This is extremely surprising to me, so perhaps I don’t have the right understanding of what constitutes a “self-employed” respondent.

My question: How are respondents who select 13 or 14 for CLASSWKR different from those who select 21- 23? Is it that they themselves are the business owner/partner of company X? And all other employees in that same company X would identify themselves as CLASSWKR 21, 22 or 23?

Hope this makes sense, and thanks in advance for your help.

2

If you look at the variable description for FIRMSIZE, you will see that self-employed are asked the number of people who worked for the respondent. This indicates that your initial guess was correct. But the number with very large firms (>1000 employees) is suspiciously large. You might want to cross check with occupation. Owners are likely going to list a management occupation. If the firm size is large and their occupation doesn’t fit with a firm owner, the respondent might not have understood the question. Unfortunately no direct question on ownership of the company is available in the public use files.