Why Participate?

Your Participation Is Important

Your contributions are crucial to the integrity of the National Compensation Survey (NCS), which provides statistically sound, reliable, timely, relevant and impartial statistical information on pay and benefits of America's workers. While participation is voluntary, we would not be able to produce the robust compensation information without your help.

The quality of the statistics produced by the Bureau is a direct reflection of the number and diversity of firms in our samples.  Each firm is critical to the accuracy of the project.   Our Nation’s firms rely upon the Bureau of Labor Statistics for critical information, and the Bureau depends on you to provide us with the data.

Since we value your time and participation we strive to make our surveys as easy to complete as possible. We design survey questions that are easy to understand and we try to minimize the amount of time it takes to answer them. Additionally, the Bureau carefully constructs its surveys to keep the number of contacts from our Field Economists to a minimum.

Without the participation by firms like you, the Bureau of Labor Statistics could not fulfill its mission and these surveys would not accurately reflect the economic and social conditions of our country.  Thank you for your help and cooperation, as it enables us to provide more accurate data that contributes to the greater public good.

Your Confidentiality Is Protected

We understand that confidentiality is extremely important to you, and that is why the confidentiality of our survey participants is strictly protected by law as well as our own security policies.

Federal law prohibits us from releasing any information that could reveal the identity of you or your business without your consent. The information that you provide can only be used to produce statistics. In other words, it can be used to describe or analyze the characteristics only of groups, not individuals, households, or specific organizations.

We have established multiple layers of protection for our computer systems and records, and we regularly train our staff concerning policies to protect your information. These laws and policies ensure that no one will be able to misuse your information or gain an unfair advantage by obtaining inside information about your business.

For more detailed information on confidentiality:

Last Modified Date: September 1, 2011