The President's Pay Agent

Future Surveys

BLS has implemented three of the five improvements designed for its National Compensation Survey (NCS) program:

(1) Problems associated with random selection of survey jobs.

Progress: BLS has designed an econometric model that was used to estimate salaries for jobs not randomly selected in the surveys. NCS program data used for this report include modeled data when survey data were not available.

(2) Matching Federal and non-Federal jobs.

Progress: OPM formed an interagency working group that developed a crosswalk between Federal job classifications and the new Standard Occupational Classification system, which BLS uses in its surveys. OPM staff made a few improvements designed to better match certain jobs, and BLS used the new crosswalk and March 2002 GS employment data to weight the NCS data used in this report.

(3) Excluding randomly selected jobs that would be classified above GS-15 in the Government.

Progress: BLS developed methods for identifying and excluding non-Federal jobs that would be classified above GS-15 in the Federal Government. These jobs were excluded from data delivered to the Pay Agent for use in the locality pay program.

Two other improvements are still under development and will not be introduced into the surveys until early in 2004. These are:

(1) Assigning GS grades to randomly selected survey jobs.

Progress: OPM has designed and tested a four-factor evaluation system for use in the surveys, and BLS has successfully used the new approach in field tests. OPM also developed 20 job family grade leveling guides that cover the range of work under the General Schedule and provide occupation-specific information for use in the surveys. Pay Agent and BLS staff plan to phase the new approach into BLS surveys beginning in early 2004. This improvement will take 5 years to fully implement because BLS conducts detailed job leveling interviews only when it first adds an establishment to its surveys and replaces only 1/5 of its establishment sample each year.

(2) Assigning GS grades to randomly selected survey jobs with supervisory duties.

Progress: BLS has identified survey establishments where supervisory jobs were surveyed, discussed new collection procedures with its staff, and tested a new method of grading supervisory jobs based on grading the highest level of work supervised.

BLS has completed field testing of the new procedures, and Pay Agent and BLS staff plan to fully incorporate the new approach into BLS surveys with the next survey cycle beginning in 2004.

The last two improvements in NCS surveys will begin to affect data delivered in 2005. We encourage BLS and Pay Agent staff to expedite completion of these last two improvements in the NCS program.