• The year represents the year in which the CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement was conducted. For example, data for 2005 was collected in the 2005 CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement.
• Many questions in CPS are asked about the status at the time of interview. Examples include age, marital status, labor force status. Responses to other questions are based on the previous (or reference) year. Examples of these include income, poverty status, health insurance coverage. In the tables generated by the CPS Table Creator, the reference year will be identified in the variable label when it is not the same as the year in which the CPS Annual Social and Economic Supplement was conducted. Thus, age and marital status will not include the year in their labels, but income and poverty status will.
• Latest Year / Number of Years example: to produce data for 2004 and 2005, select Year = 2005 and Number of Years = 2.
• Tables for more than one year of data will take longer to create.
• For the Average or Separate item,
  • If the number of years you select is "one", the value in this field is ignored.
  • If you select multiple years, "Average" will provide data averaged across the selected years. See exception below.
  • If you select multiple years, "Separate" will provide a separate table for each of the selected years.
  • There is one exception to the "Average" selection: if you select the CPS Reference Year as a variable for any row/column/page, the data will NOT be averaged across each year. This is how you would display data for multiple years in ONE table.
  • At present, there are NO COST OF LIVING ADJUSTMENTS made to ANY fields. Thus, two- and three-year averages for income variables may not yield the results you desire.

• Multiple row or column variables can be nested (the default) or concatenated.
• When a page variable is requested, a separate table is created for each value of the page variable.
• When a page variable is requested, there MUST be at least one row variable, column variable, or both.
• If a page variable is requested but no row variable, the pagevariable will be displayed as a row variable, not a page variable.
• If a page variable is requested but no column variable, the page variable WILL be treated as a page variable.
• When there are no observations for a particular value for all rows (or columns), then the column (or row) will not appear in the table. It will NOT appear with all zeros.
  

  For example, if you want a sex by age table for Iowa and the "NHOPI alone" (Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander) race subset, you select age ranges of 10-11, 12-13, 14-14, and 15-65, and there are no 14-year-olds of either sex (for this subset) on the CPS data file, you will NOT get a column for 14-year-olds with zero values, the column for 14-year-olds will simply not appear in the table.

Click Help for list of variable descriptions.

• The available statistics are cell sums, percentages for a variable in the table, unweighted record counts, and, for one addional numeric variable, one or more of the statistics from the list of mean (average), minimum value, maximum value, and sum.
• You must include at least one statistic, but within this constraint, you can include any combination of the available statistics.

• You can control whether you want the statistics displayed as rows or as columns. Columns are generally easier to read, but, for many variables, may make a table very wide, forcing the table to be parsed into sections.
• The system defaults to column display of statistics.
• If the table structure has rows, but no columns, the statistics will be displayed in columns no matter what you select for this field. All other combinations should display as you request.
• If the ONLY statistic requested is SUMs, column display produces a more attractive table than row display.

• The sum is a weighted count of the persons, families, or households in the cell.

• If you include a percentage variable, the variable MUST have been selected for a row or a column variable (not a page variable).
• The percentage variable can be any nested row or column variable or the concatenated variable when only one concatenated variable (for a row or column) has been selected.
• If the table has multiple concatenated row (or column) variables, none of those variables may be used as a percentage variable since the table cells for the other concatenated variables will have no relationship to the percent variable.
• The percentages can be displayed as columns (the default) or as rows in the table. However, if your table has column variables only, you may not display percentages in rows.
• You may display percentages with zero (the default), one, or two decimal places.
• The percentage variable is displayed in the table's title.

• The unweighted record count provides the number of records on the Current Population Survey input files contributing to these data.

• The statistics currently available are mean (or average), median, minimum, maximum, and sum.
• No more than one additional variable can be included in a table.
• You may select one or more statistics for the selected variable. For multiple selections, the usual rules for window applications apply. Hold down the shift key and use the up- and down-arrows to select consective choices. Or hold down the control key and use the mouse to select any combination of choices. The statistics in the table will be listed in the order they appear in the selection lists, not the order in which you select them.
• The number of decimals you choose to display will apply to ALL additional statistics you select.

• Note that age is top-coded to 80. That is, anyone whose actual age is 80 or higher has a value of 80.
• A default pre-defined set of age ranges has been provided. You may select an alternative pre-defined set of age ranges or you may customize your own age ranges by selecting "Customize..." from the selection list and entering the age ranges (up to nine ranges) you desire.
• If you select both a pre-defined set of ranges and enter your own customized ranges, the pre-defined set will be used. Your customized ranges will be ignored unless you've selected "Customize...".
• For customized age ranges, be sure that the maximum for each range is at least as large as the minimum.
• Ranges must be sequential from lowest to highest with NO AGE GAPS.
• Numbers below 10 can be entered with or without leading zeros.
• If the set of age ranges does not include all ages, it will act as subset for the table (whether or not age is a row/column/page variable).

• When there are no records for a particular cell, the software will place a one-character symbol in the cell. Available characters are:
  .    (period, the default)
  0   (the number zero)
  -   (dash)
  
• Note that if a valid column (or row) has no records for all rows (or columns), the column (or row) will NOT appear in the table at all. It will NOT be listed with the missing values symbol for all rows (or columns). For example, if sex is a column variable for a table that includes data subsetted to include only females, there will be no male column.