Chapter 5.
Employment and Wages Covered by Unemployment Insurance
Comparison of the ES-202 Program with Other
Series A number of other statistical data series are
comparable in some respects to those provided in the
ES-202 program. These series all have certain
applications, strengths, and shortcomings. Because of its
broad universe coverage, continuity, and currency, the
ES-202 program is one of the most useful.
Current Employment Statistics
The Current
Employment Statistics (CES) program uses a sample of
about 390,000 establishments to provide current estimates
of monthly nonfarm employment, average weekly hours, and
average hourly and weekly earnings. Employment estimates
derived from the CES are benchmarked primarily to ES-202
records, which cover about 98 percent of all nonfarm
employees and 98 percent of those in the private nonfarm
sector. For the remaining industries, the CES program
uses other sources to estimate employment not covered by
State UI laws.
In addition to being both sample-based rather than a
universe count and more current, the CES program differs
from the ES-202 program in that the former provides paid
hours and weighted weekly earnings estimates for
production workers in manufacturing and nonsupervisory
workers in nonmanufacturing. The ES-202 program provides
total quarterly payroll data for all employees, unrelated
to hours paid. Also, the CES program data are available
monthly, whereas ES-202 data are available quarterly.
Current Population Survey
The Current
Population Survey (CPS) is a sample survey of about
50,000 households selected to represent the entire
civilian noninstitutional population and designed to
measure overall employment, unemployment, and those not
in the labor force. In terms of employment, the sample
thus includes categories of workers which are entirely or
partly excluded from the ES-202 program: Certain farm and
domestic workers, the self-employed, persons working 15
hours or more in the survey reference week as unpaid
workers in a family-operated enterprise, employees of
certain nonprofit organizations, and railroad workers.
The CPS also counts employees uncompensated because of
temporary absence but excludes workers under 16 years
old.
Because the CPS is a sample and surveys households
rather than establishments, it cannot present employment
and wage data in the industrial and geographical detail
available under the ES-202 program, but it does provide
demographic characteristics. As a household survey, its
focus is on individuals, whereas establishment-based
surveys such as the ES-202 program focus on jobs. When
providing geographic information, the CPS program
tabulates data by the location of the residence. On the
other hand, the ES-202 program provides its State and
county data by the location of the job. Both CPS and CES
data are released within 1 month of the reference period;
ES-202 data become available several months after the
reference quarter.
County Business Patterns
Quarterly census of employment and wages data from the ES-202 program
differ from employment data published in County
Business Patterns (CBP) of the
Bureau of the Census in the following major areas: (1)
CBP data exclude administrative and auxiliary units from
"operating" unit data at the 4-digit level and
include these data at the industry division level only.
ES-202 covered employment, on the other hand, includes
data for these units at the 4-digit SIC level. (2) CBP
excludes agricultural production workers and household
workers, some of whom are included in ES-202 covered
employment data. CBP also excludes government units, all
of which are included in the ES-202 program. (3) Every 5
years, data are collected for all multi-units within the
scope of business and economic censuses and included in
the CBP for that year. Annual updates for the larger
multi-units are obtained from the sample selected for the
Report of Organization Survey, and data for
nonsample multi-units are estimated. Annual updates for
single units come from the Internal Revenue Service and
the Social Security Administration. ES-202 quarterly census of employment and wages
data, on the other hand, include
data collected from all active units each quarter.
Office of Personnel Management
The Office of Personnel
Management (OPM) maintains and publishes a
statistical series on Federal employment and payrolls
with information by agency, type of position and
appointment, and characteristics of employees. Both the
OPM and ES-202 series exclude the Central Intelligence
Agency and the National Security Agency, the Armed
Forces, temporary emergency workers employed to cope with
catastrophes, and officers and crews of certain American
vessels. OPM data, but not ES-202 data, include employees
working in foreign countries, workers paid on a fee or
commission basis, and paid patients, inmates, and certain
employees of Federal institutions. Conversely, ES-202
data, but not OPM data, include Department of Defense
employees paid from nonappropriated funds as well as
employees with Federal appointments to the Agricultural
Extension Service, County Agricultural Stabilization and
Conservation Committees, and State and Area Marketing
Committees.
In comparison with the OPM data, ES-202 program data
provide more industry, local employment, and wage detail
and more frequently updated detail on employment by
State. The OPM data series, of course, have certain
statistics that have no parallel in the ES-202 program.
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