Follow-up to your reply to my question about WKSTAT

Hi Jeff.

>> If you are seeing an alternative BLS definition elsewhere please let me know.

Attached is a an Excel document I received from the BLS on how they compute various measures associated with the labor force.

If I understood your reply, the coding of WKSTAT components is arbitrary. Am I correct?

Best.

–Stuart

Copy of Concepts Mos.xlsx (18.3 KB)

Thanks for sharing this information with us, I’ll share it with the IPUMS CPS Team.

Regarding WKSTAT codes: They are not arbitrary. Although the order of the codes is different than the coding scheme for PRWKSTAT, the various categories of the codes are identical to the categories provided by the BLS. You can re-code the IPUMS CPS codes to match the PRWKSTAT coding scheme. The reason for the different order (in the IPUMS CPS variable WKSTAT) is that over time the codes for PRWKSTAT have changed and in order to achieve comparability the coding order was adjusted.