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February 2006, Vol. 129, No. 2
Business employment dynamics: tabulations by employer size
Shail J. Butani
Chief, Statistical Methods Staff, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Richard L. Clayton
Chief, Division of Administrative Statistics and Labor Turnover, Bureau
of Labor Statistics.
Vinod Kapani
Supervisory Mathematical Statistician, Office of Employment and Unemployment
Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
James R. Spletzer
Senior Research Economist, Office of Employment and Unemployment
Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics. E-mail: Spletzer.Jim@bls.gov
David M. Talan
Supervisory Economist, Office of Employment and Unemployment
Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
George S. Werking Jr.
Formerly Assistant Commissioner, Office of Employment and Unemployment
Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This article discusses the alternative statistical methodologies that BLS considered for creating size class tabulations from the Business Employment Dynamics (BED) data. To measure continuous quarterly employment growth by employer size, BLS, with the help of its research community, chooses the best methodology available among quarterly base-sizing, annual base-sizing, mean-sizing, and dynamic-sizing. The article discusses the evaluation criteria that BLS considered for choosing its official size class methodology. Although BLS is making the seasonally adjusted data series from all the classification methodologies available for research purposes, one methodology—dynamic-sizing—was chosen as the official methodology for citation and analysis in the quarterly BED press release.
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