As a measure of labor market strength, the raw employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) confounds employment outcomes with labor supply behavior. Movement in the EPOP depends on the relative movements of the employment rate (one minus the unemployment rate) and the labor force participation rate....

Human capital is a vital component in the production process, so the size of the labor force can profoundly affect the potential for economic growth. In the United States, the overall labor force participation rate (LFPR)the percent of the population supplying labor to the marketbegan to grow in...

We use a unique panel of household survey data - the Austrian version of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) for 2008-2011 - which have been linked to individual administrative records on both state unemployment benefits and earnings. We assess the extent and...

In empirical research it is common practice to use sensible rules of thumb for cleaning data. Measurement error is often the justification for removing (trimming) or recoding (winsorizing) observations whose values lie outside a specified range. We consider a general measurement error process...

This paper examines alternative forms of match bias arising from earnings imputation. Wage equation parameters are estimated based on mixed samples of workers who do and do not report earnings, the latter group being assigned earnings of donors who share some but not all the attributes of the...

Despite evidence that skilled labor is increasingly concentrated in cities, whether regional wage inequality is predominantly due to differences in skill levels or returns is unknown. We compare Appalachia, with its wide mix of urban and rural areas, to other parts of the U.S., and find that...

Earnings nonresponse in the Current Population Survey is roughly 30% in the monthly surveys and 20% in the annual March survey. Even if nonresponse is random, severe bias attaches to wage equation coefficient estimates on attributes not matched in the earnings imputation hot deck. If nonresponse...