Technical User Guides

Detailed Definitions, Formulas and Examples for Quarterly Workforce Indicators
Employer Characteristics File
Business Register Bridge to Census Business Data
Infrastructure Files and the Creation of Quarterly Workforce Indicators

• Internal Paper LEHD-OVERVIEW-S2004
  LEHD Infrastructure files in the Census RDC � Overview (Revision: 219) [PDF; File Size: 2MB]
  Date: August 2007. Author(s): Kevin McKinney and Lars Vilhuber

Detailed Definitions, Formulas and Examples for Quarterly Workforce Indicators

Now available to all users, detailed definitions are provided in .pdf format for measures of Worker Employment (3 measures), Worker Employment Change (7 measures), Worker Earnings (5 measures) and Firm Employment Change (6 measures) as used in the Quarterly Workforce Indicators.

• Worker Employment (PDF; File Size: 55KB)
• Worker Employment Change (PDF; File Size: 745KB)
• Worker Earnings (PDF; File Size: 408KB)
• Firm Employment Change (PDF. File Size: 878KB)

Employer Characteristics File

The Employer Characteristics File (ECF) consolidates most firm level information (size, location, industry, etc.) into two easily accessible files. The firm or State Employer Identification Number (SEIN) level file contains one record for every YEAR-QUARTER a firm is present in either the ES-202 or the UI, with more detailed information available for the establishments of multi-unit firms in the SEIN-SEINUNIT file. The SEIN file is built up from the SEINUNIT file and contains no additional information, but should be viewed merely as an easier and/or more efficient way to access firm level data.

SEIN level file unique record identifier: SEIN YEAR QUARTER

SEIN level file sort order: SEIN YEAR QUARTER

SEIN level file indexes: SEIN, SEIN YEAR QUARTER

SEINUNIT level file unique record identifier: SEIN SEINUNIT YEAR QUARTER

SEINUNIT level file sort order: SEIN SEINUNIT YEAR QUARTER

SEINUNIT level file indexes: SEIN, SEIN_SEINUNIT_YEAR_QUARTER, SEIN_YEAR_QUARTER, SEIN_YEAR_QUARTER_SEINUNIT

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Business Register Bridge to Census Business Data

The LEHD employer-level data are at an establishment-level and can be linked to Census Bureau's establishment and firm level microdata (e.g. Economic Censuses and Surveys) via this bridge. The bridge provides a cross walk at various levels of business-unit aggregation. The most detailed exact crosswalk is at an Employer Identification Number (EIN), State, 4-digit industry, county level. The bridge includes the full list of establishments in the LEHD data and in the Business Register that are associated with the business units (e.g. EIN/4-digit SIC/State/County) in the crosswalk and measures of activity (e.g. employment, sales) that can be used to aggregate the establishment level data.

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Infrastructure Files and the Creation of Quarterly Workforce Indicators

The Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics program at the U.S. Census Bureau, with funding from several national funding agencies, has built a set of infrastructure files using administrative data provided by state agencies, enhanced with information culled from demographic and economic (business) surveys and censuses. The LEHD Infrastructure Files provide a detailed and comprehensive picture of workers, employers, and their interaction in the U.S. economy. Building on this infrastructure, the Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI), a new dataseries published since 2003 by the U.S. Census Bureau, are computed. The QWI offer unprecedented detail on the local dynamics of labor markets. Despite the fine detail, confidentiality is maintained due to the application of state-of-the-art confidentiality protection methods. This article describes how the input files are compiled and combined to create the infrastructure files. The multiple imputation mechanisms that are used to fill in missing data, and the statistical matching techniques used to combine data where a direct match is not possible are both crucial to the success of the final product, and described in detail here. Finally, special attention is paid to the confidentiality protection mechanisms used to hide the identity of the underlying entities in the final published data. A brief description of public-use and restricted-access data files is also provided, with pointers to further documentation for researchers interested in using these data.

• Paper Presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research's Conference on Research in Income and Wealth
  The LEHD Infrastructure Files and the Creation of Quarterly Workforce Indicators [PDF; File Size: 760KB]
  Date: January 2006. Author(s): John Abowd, Bryce Stephens and Lars Vilhuber with Kevin McKinney, Marc Roemer and Simon Woodcock

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