Abstract
Karen L. Goldenberg, Susan E. Moore, and Richard J. Rosen (1994) "Commercial Payroll Software and
the Quality of Employment Data," Proceedings of the Section
on Survey Research Methods, American Statistical Association,
forthcoming.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) measures monthly job
fluctuations by tabulating employee counts supplied by
establishments on two different reports: State Unemployment
Insurance Quarterly Contribution Reports and the BLS monthly
Report on Employment, Payrolls, and Hours. For statistical
purposes, BLS defines an employee as a person "who
worked during or received pay for the pay period containing
the 12th of the month." Participants often obtain these
employee counts from reports associated with payroll records.
Since many payrolls are generated by computer software, the
definition of employment used by the software in producing
counts has implications for the quality and accuracy of this
vital economic indicator. In this paper, we report research
into commercial payroll software produced by two types of
organizations: payroll processing firms (service bureaus)
that use proprietary software to generate paychecks and other
payroll data, and software developers that sell or distribute
payroll software to individual users. Software users can be
private companies, or they can themselves be service bureaus
or accountants who use the software to prepare paychecks for
clients. The research focuses on measurement error associated
with commercial payroll software and whether employee counts
meet the method, timing, and content components of the
employment definition.
Last Modified Date: July 19, 2008
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