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Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages David M. Talan AUBER 2011 Fall Conference Indianapolis, Indiana October 9, 2011

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Outline Background QCEW Data Available Data Sharing New Statistical Products

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Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Quarterly census of employers covered under UI and federal employers covered under UCFE 98% of U.S. Employment

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QCEW Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Quarterly data (frequent) Released 6 months after reference period - timely 9.1 million records and growing 130 million in employment Units, employment and wages 6 digit NAICS and county, ownership 20 million data series available on the BLS website UI based, mandatory collections to run UI Wages- 98% reported data Employment- 97% reported data Units- 95% reported data 4

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UI Tax Rate, Actuarial Analysis and UI Benefit Rates UI-Covered Employment Local Area Unemployment Stats Personal Income (BEA) - U.S., State, County Gross Domestic Product (BEA) Economic Forecasting Current Employment Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics Job Creation/Destruction Size Class Dynamics Business Survival Rates Geocoded Establishments Occupational Employment Statistics Occupational Safety and Health Statistics Current Employment Statistics National Compensation Survey Industrial Price Program Occupational Safety and Health Statistics Programmatic Uses Benchmarking (Employment Base) General Economic Uses Quarterly Census of Employment & Wages Data (QCEW/ES-202) Analytical Uses Sampling Mass Layoff Statistics: linkages State Revenue Projections (BEA) JOLTS and Green Goods and Services JOLTS and Green Goods and Services and State Job Vacancy Surveys..and other federal govt surveys Local Economic Development Indicators Cluster Analysis Shift Share Industry Diversity Indexes Location Quotients Federal Funds Allocation $250 Billion (HUD, USDA, HCFA/CHIP) Minimum Wage Studies Uses of Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages Data (QCEW/ES-202) Local Economic Impact Response Planning Local Government Services Planning Census Bureau Improve Economic Census Improve CPS each decennial population Census LEHD / LED Industry Code Sharing (3.3 M) County Business Patterns Local Transportation Planning State/local industry employment & wages Social Security Administration Updated as of 6/14/2011 Quarterly Press Releases, Annual Employment & Wages REMI and Input-Output Tables

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Investment in Quality Source: BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) Administrative data from Unemployment Insurance filings (UI) Huge investment in improving raw administrative data Two supplemental collections ARS- Annual Refiling Survey MWR- Multiple Worksite Report

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Independent Validation Checks Current Employment Statistics Survey Monthly Survey of Employment and Earners 400,000 establishments Detailed industry and geographic estimates Individual Wage Records National State 7

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Highly Accurate Data Thorough editing and review at the state, regional, and national levels each quarter QCEW staff contact businesses to validate or correct questionable data and/or provide missing data (probably unique in this respect) Development of new processing system with even more powerful editing and review capabilities 8

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Quality issues: Timeliness, Accuracy, Relevance Timeliness: Streamlining QCEW and BED release processes Relevance: Data fuzzing: working with experts to develop fuzzing techniques Relevance: more BED and Non-profits, Ocean data, Relevance: working on clusters, shift share calculator Relevance: working with Transportation experts towards greater use of QCEW data. 9

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Timeliness January 1 March 31 = Reference Quarter March 31 April 30 = Reporting Period May 1 July 29 = UI Processing QCEW Extract from UI QCEW Edit & Review July 30 Sept 28 = State File sent to BLS BLS Review State Updates Received September 29, 2011 = Publication Lag = 6 months

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New products, new users, expanding support base NOAA: adding elevation to geocodes Galveston, SF and Miami for detailed assessments of potential water damage: sea level rise Non-Profits: developing a permanent non- profit methodology for ongoing publication. Foreign Direct Investment: Any demand for state level FDI from QCEW? Uses and users? 11

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Improved Confidentiality Processing EZS Approach (Evans, Zayatz, and Slanta) Goal: Protect tabular data Process: Perturb data at micro-level Currently in research phase Is the tradeoff between more published cells at the cost of some small accuracy a good one? 12

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Data Sharing Bureau of Economic Analysis Census Bureau National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Future Data Sharing Plans

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Bureau of Economic Analysis Receives Employment and Wage Data every quarter Used to prepare the Personal Income component of the National Income and Products Accounts at the national, state and county level QCEW wages represent 94% of the wage and salary component of Personal Income and 42.5% of GDP 14

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Census Bureau Receives industry codes every quarter. Used in the Census Business Register to help classify new establishments. In FY2011, BLS supplied Census with 3.3 million matched firm records This data sharing project reduces respondent burden, improves industry codes for Census, and helps to create consistent statistical products 15

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NOAA Used to develop ocean economy economic indicators of employment and wages at the national, state and county level This data sharing project is helping NOAA develop new social science tools and methods used to address the nations coastal issues http://csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/s napshots/index.html http://csc.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/tools/s napshots/index.html 16

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Future Data Sharing Plans More Data Sharing with Census: Sharing Multi-units data Sharing Professional Employer Organization (PEO) data Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service 17

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Employment and Wage Data Number of establishments, monthly employment, and quarterly wages Available by: geographical area industry code size WAGES

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QCEW Mapping Tool 19

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QCEW Mapping Tool 20

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Uses of Geocoded Data 21

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23 Business Employment Dynamics National Total Private National NAICS Sector National Firm Size State Total Private National Size of Employment Change Annual (National/State) Birth Death National/State) 3 Digit national data Age and survival National and state 2 digit Future? More, much more September 2003 May 2004 December 2005 August 2007 September 2008 May 19, 2009 May 20, 2010 August 19, 2010

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BED are longitudinally linked QCEW microdata Unit of analysis is the Establishment BED Scope Private sector, excludes private households 6.8 million establishments 107 million employment BED reveals the dynamics of the labor market. BED data show gross job flows as well as net employment changes What are the BED?

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A set of statistics measuring changes in employment at the establishment level on a quarterly basis Job churn Creative destruction What are the BED?

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BED statistics break down the underlying dynamics of net employment change into the numbers and rates of gross jobs gained and gross jobs lost Gross job gains Expansions Openings Births Gross job losses Contractions Closings Deaths What are the BED?

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High Frequency and Timely Gross Job Flows Available 8 months after the reference quarter http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cewbd.pdf http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cewbd.pdf 2 week speed-up this year Data and charts available on the BLS website: http://www.bls.gov/bdm/ http://www.bls.gov/bdm/ BED Press Release

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Gross Job Gains and Losses Gross job gains Gross job losses

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BED Components Expansions Contractions Openings Closings

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Number of Openings Closings: U.S. Total Private 30 2007March9,000 June-11,000 September15,000 December23,000 2008March-22,000 June-39,000 September-23,000 December-43,000 2009March-89,000 June-50,000 September-59,000 December15,000 2010March-50,000 June5,000 September-12,000

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Construction of Buildings

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Real Estate

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Arizona

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Florida

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North Dakota

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36 Small Firms Lagging, With Bulk of Job Losses Most of the job losses at the end of last year took place at the smallest firms, underscoring how small businesses are lagging in the recovery. August 19, 2010 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704557704575437650742168186.html?mod=W SJ_economy_LeftTopHighlights

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Net Employment Change By Firm Size 37 NOTE: Some smaller firms had net employment losses before the start of the recession in December 2007

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Why BED data by establishment age? 39 The Committee on National Statistics recommended employment dynamics data by age. Age and survival data along will complete demographic profile of US businesses. Unsettled debate on who creates the most jobs: young or old firms? A debate similar to the small vs. large firms contribution to employment growth. The impact of age of firm/establishment on employment growth and productivity is inconclusive. New research (Young firms, Not Small Ones, Are the Engines of Growth ) showed controlling for age, there is no systematic relationship between firm size and growth.

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40 Weak Pace of Start-Ups could hurt Recovery Entrepreneurs have started up the fewest new U.S. businesses in more than a decade, according to government figures that could spell more bad news for job creation. USATODAY June 13, 2011 http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/2011-06-13-small- business-start-ups-fewer_n.htm

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Home Prices compared to Establishment Births

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Survival Rates Across Cohorts 44

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What new products would you like? Detailed State Data 6-Digit County Level Birth/Death Counts Firm Size by Industry, State Firm v. Establishment Data? Age Others? Please let us know! Customer Feedback

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Accessing the QCEW and BED Macrodata BED: http://www.bls.gov/bdm/home.htm http://www.bls.gov/bdm/home.htm QCEW: http://www.bls.gov/cew/home.htm http://www.bls.gov/cew/home.htm 47

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Contact Information David Talan Phone: (202) 691-6467 Email: talan.david@bls.gov Website: www.bls.gov/bdmtalan.david@bls.govwww.bls.gov/bdm