UNION variable - missing value for December 2021?

CPS
1

I’m trying to estimate union coverage for 2021 - that is, both people who are union members and those covered by a union contract without being members. I noticed that the IPUMS UNION variable is missing UNION==3 “Covered by union but not a member” for December 2021.

I’ve used the unharmonized variables (UH_UNCOV_B1 and UH_UNMEM_B1) to create something equivalent to UNION==2 | UNION==3. However, I’m still concerned that I’m missing an underlying change here (though I didn’t see anything in the CPS data dictionary indicating as much). Is there a reason the “Covered by union but not a member” category is missing from the harmonized IPUMS UNION variable in December 2021?

2

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. You did not miss an underlying change–this is an error on our part. We will correct the issue with our next data release. We would like to send you an IPUMS mug as a token of our appreciation; please email ipums@umn.edu with a mailing address where we can send this small thank you.

It sounds like you have already found a workaround with the unharmonized variable; for the sake of comparability, I will note that IPUMS CPS assigns UNION a code of 3 in cases where UH_UNMEM_B1 = 2 and UH_UNCOV_B1 = 1.