Dec 22 -- The Census Bureau asks OMB to approve the collection of state administrative records for the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program and invites public input by January 21, 2021.
The LEHD program aims to improve the labor market data infrastructure and prepare products for better understanding of the dynamics of the U.S. labor market. This research will provide important data to support Census Bureau programs including the Master Address File, current demographic and economic survey and census operations, the Intercensal Estimates Program’s population and housing estimates, and related census and survey program improvements. The Census Bureau enters into agreements with individual states, the District of Columbia, and eligible U.S. territories respectively to share data under the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) partnership. Under these agreements, the State Agency supplies specific historical and ongoing administrative records on workers and employers (LEHD data) to the Census Bureau. In return, the Census Bureau integrates the state data with other data sources to build a longitudinal data infrastructure and produce new and previously unavailable data about the dynamics of local employment and locations of jobs and workers.
The LEHD program supports the Department of Commerce plan to improve American competitiveness and measures of innovation. It provides federal, state, and local policymakers and planners, businesses, private sector decision makers, and Congress with comprehensive and timely national, state, and local information on the dynamic nature of employers and employees. The LEHD program significantly reduces the overall effort for the generation of its quarterly data product by:
• Leveraging existing federal administrative and state data
• Avoiding costs required to expand existing surveys to collect the information directly
• Reducing respondent burden by limiting the number of required resources to just the owners of the required data
The LEHD program is the result of the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) partnership between the US Census Bureau and the Labor Market Information (LMI) agencies from 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands. This partnership supports the development, promotion, and distribution of the following data products:
• QWI Public Use - The flagship data product of the LEHD program is the QWI Public Use which provides 32 statistical indicators such as those on employment, job creation and destruction, accessions (e.g., hires and recalls), and separations (e.g. exits and layoffs). These statistics are released for the following by-groups for all quarters for which data are available for each partner state:
o County, metropolitan, and workforce investment area
o Age, sex, race, and ethnicity categories
o Detailed industry (i.e., type, firm age, firm size)
• LEHD Origin Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) - LODES data provide detailed spatial distributions of workers' employment and residential locations and the relation between the two at the Census Block level. LODES also provides characteristic detail on age, earnings, industry distributions, and local workforce indicators.
• Job-to-Job Flows (J2J) - Job-to-Job Flows (J2J) is a new set of statistics on worker reallocation in the United States constructed from the LEHD data. The initial release of national data distinguishes hires and separations associated with job change from hires from and separations to non-employment. Future releases will be published at more detailed levels of aggregations, and will tabulate the origin and destination job characteristics of workers changing jobs.
• Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) is an experimental set of statistics on the earnings and employment outcomes of graduates of select post-secondary institutions in the United States, and is constructed using LEHD data. Earnings Outcomes reports earnings by institution, degree field, degree level and graduation cohort for 1, 5 and 10 years after graduation. Employment Flows tabulations provide the destination industry and geography of employment for graduates of an institution by degree level, degree field, and graduation cohort, for one, five, and 10 years after graduation. A limited number of institutions are available as part of the pilot release, but future updates will include additional post-secondary institutions.
LEHD data are collected electronically as follows:
• State Unemployment Insurance (UI) and Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) are provided via secure File Transfer Protocol (FTP) where each state LMI agency sends these data directly to the Census Bureau. This transfer of data is governed by a Memorandum of Understandings (MOUs) with each state partner.
• Federal and Census Administrative data are acquired from other directorates or divisions within the Census Bureau where an internal agreement has been established for the use of the data.
• Public Use data sets are acquired from public source websites or public FTP servers.
LEHD website:
https://lehd.ces.census.gov/
LEHD package submitted to OMB:
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=202012-0607-006 Click on View Supporting Statement for narrative
FR notice inviting comment:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/12/22/2020-28139/agency-information-collection-activities-submission-to-the-office-of-management-and-budget-omb-for
Point of contact: Erika McEntarfer – LEHD Economics Research Group (LERG) Team Lead - 301-763-8555 Erika.McEntarfer@census.gov
For AEA members wishing to submit comments, "A Primer on How to Respond to Calls for Comment on Federal Data Collections" is available at
https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=5806