Are Labor Market Indicators Telling the Truth? : Role of Measurement Error in the U.S. Current Population Survey /

Labor market indicators are critical for policymakers, but measurement error in labor force survey data is known to be substantial. In this paper, I quantify the implications of classification errors in the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), in which respondents misreport their true labor force s...

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Bibliografski detalji
Glavni autor: Shibata, Ippei
Format: Žurnal
Jezik:English
Izdano: Washington, D.C. : International Monetary Fund, 2019.
Serija:IMF Working Papers; Working Paper ; No. 2019/040
Online pristup:Full text available on IMF
Opis
Sažetak:Labor market indicators are critical for policymakers, but measurement error in labor force survey data is known to be substantial. In this paper, I quantify the implications of classification errors in the U.S. Current Population Survey (CPS), in which respondents misreport their true labor force status. Once I correct for measurement error using a latent variable approach, the unemployment rate is on average 0.8 percentage points (ppts) higher than the official unemployment rate, with a maximum of 2.0 ppts higher between 1996 and 2018. This paper further quantifies the contributions to business-cycle fluctuations in the unemployment rate from job separation, job finding, and participation. Correcting for misclassification changes previous studies' results about the contributions of these transition probabilities: job separation accounts for more of the unemployment fluctuations, while participation accounts for fewer. The methodology I propose can be applied to any other labor force survey in which labor force status is observed for three periods.
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Opis:1 online resource (40 pages)
Format:Mode of access: Internet
ISSN:1018-5941
Pristup:Electronic access restricted to authorized BRAC University faculty, staff and students