TRANTIME: value of 0 for workers?

USA
1

Hi, I have a short question about the variable TRANTIME. I would greatly appreciate your help! I am currently working with the American Community Survey, only with recent years (2015-2018).

The matter is simple. I am using the variable “trantime”, which I understand, refers to the minutes that it takes for the respondent to get from home to work. I further understand it is defined for people who report being employed. My doubt is about the value “0” in trantime. I see that all workers who reported they work from home (tranwork=70), are assigned 0 in trantime, which, of course, makes sense. Yet, I also see that the number of people with a value of 0 in trantime is larger than the number of workers who reported they work from home. Perhaps you could clarify who are the workers (empstat=1) who show up as having 0 minutes in trantime, besides those who work from home? I just would like to be clear about what 0 means in this variable.

Thank you so much for your time,

2

The tricky detail here is that the general codes for EMPSTAT do not distinguish between “has job, at work” and “has job, not at work.” This is an important distinction for TRANTIME. If you use the detailed codes for EMPSTAT, and specifically condition on EMPSTATD==10 “has job, at work,” then you will find that the only zeros in TRANTIME are those who work at home (i.e., TRANWORK==70).

3

I got it, thank you SO much!