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RE: [CTPP] Reconciling Total Employment and Workers-at-Work (long post)

by Sam Granato

The gap between the employment out there and what gets reported in the Census is a lot higher when you factor in jobs not covered by the ES202 system, both wage/salary and "self-employed" proprietors. (The 6% upward adjustment ABAG reports to you seems low, BEA figures would indicate about a 20% adjustment needed.) Non-response could be the biggest factor - I imagine the Census Bureau would have a hard time "imputing" number of workers if a household ignores all the work-related questions on the long form. TO: CTPP-News listserv FR: Chuck Purvis RE: Reconciling Total Employment and Workers-at-Work One of the many data issues relevant to the release of the county-to-county total worker flow data is the reconciliation of independent estimates of employment (jobs) with the Census 2000 workers-at-work data. My executive director saw a recent article in the Los Angeles Times about the mismatch between census data and employment and labor force data, and was concerned if this is an issue in our region. My short answer to my ED was, no, the data problems faced in New York and Los Angeles are not that serious in the Bay Area. I also provided him the "long answer" which may prove useful to other metro areas interested in reconciling different data sets. The bottom line is that estimates of TOTAL EMPLOYMENT (i.e., jobs at area of work) SHOULD BE about 7 to 9 percent HIGHER than Census 2000 estimates of workers-at-work (i.e., workers at area of work). It is important to understand that there are important definitional differences between total employment and decennial census-based workers-at-work. Our indepedent estimate of total employment, year 2000, is 3,753,700 total jobs; Census 2000 data on workers-at-work is 3,396,800. This shows that our total employment, unadjusted, is 10.5 percent higher than our census-based workers-at-work. This is a really big difference! AFTER ADJUSTMENTS, the difference between our total employment (adjusted) and census-based workers-at-work is 1.1 percent. There are three main ADJUSTMENTS that are needed to make TOTAL EMPLOYMENT data comparable to census workers-at-work data: 1. Seasonal fluctuations in employment adjustments; 2. Multiple jobholding adjustments; and 3. Weekly absenteeism adjustments. Sam Granato Ohio DOT, Office of Technical Services 1980 W. Broad Street, Columbus, OH 43223 Phone: 614-644-6796, Fax: 614-752-8646 "It is a fine line between insight and idiocy." Greg Lebedev

23 years, 3 months

RE: [CTPP] Reconciling Total Employment and Workers-at-Work (long post)

by Bill Barlow

Gentlemen, Your going into an intriguing "questioning" of the employment numbers. One I'm sure the census people themselves discussed but probably never resolved. I would like to add this complexity - As Transpo nerds, we really want to know how many trips are associated with these varying activities, i.e. is moonlighting a linked trip or a home based (after dinner) phenomena?, do the self employed work out of the house? The self employed question is probably very crucial, because many will be in the service businesses (like carpet cleaners), who generate dozens of trips a day. keep up the query!!! >>> "Sam Granato" <Sam.Granato(a)dot.state.oh.us> 03/18/03 09:18AM >>> The gap between the employment out there and what gets reported in the Census is a lot higher when you factor in jobs not covered by the ES202 system, both wage/salary and "self-employed" proprietors. (The 6% upward adjustment ABAG reports to you seems low, BEA figures would indicate about a 20% adjustment needed.) Non-response could be the biggest factor - I imagine the Census Bureau would have a hard time "imputing" number of workers if a household ignores all the work-related questions on the long form. TO: CTPP-News listserv FR: Chuck Purvis RE: Reconciling Total Employment and Workers-at-Work One of the many data issues relevant to the release of the county-to-county total worker flow data is the reconciliation of independent estimates of employment (jobs) with the Census 2000 workers-at-work data. My executive director saw a recent article in the Los Angeles Times about the mismatch between census data and employment and labor force data, and was concerned if this is an issue in our region. My short answer to my ED was, no, the data problems faced in New York and Los Angeles are not that serious in the Bay Area. I also provided him the "long answer" which may prove useful to other metro areas interested in reconciling different data sets. The bottom line is that estimates of TOTAL EMPLOYMENT (i.e., jobs at area of work) SHOULD BE about 7 to 9 percent HIGHER than Census 2000 estimates of workers-at-work (i.e., workers at area of work). It is important to understand that there are important definitional differences between total employment and decennial census-based workers-at-work. Our indepedent estimate of total employment, year 2000, is 3,753,700 total jobs; Census 2000 data on workers-at-work is 3,396,800. This shows that our total employment, unadjusted, is 10.5 percent higher than our census-based workers-at-work. This is a really big difference! AFTER ADJUSTMENTS, the difference between our total employment (adjusted) and census-based workers-at-work is 1.1 percent. There are three main ADJUSTMENTS that are needed to make TOTAL EMPLOYMENT data comparable to census workers-at-work data: 1. Seasonal fluctuations in employment adjustments; 2. Multiple jobholding adjustments; and 3. Weekly absenteeism adjustments. Sam Granato Ohio DOT, Office of Technical Services 1980 W. Broad Street, Columbus, OH 43223 Phone: 614-644-6796, Fax: 614-752-8646 "It is a fine line between insight and idiocy." Greg Lebedev

23 years, 3 months

Reconciling Total Employment and Workers-at-Work (long post)

by Chuck Purvis

TO: CTPP-News listserv FR: Chuck Purvis RE: Reconciling Total Employment and Workers-at-Work One of the many data issues relevant to the release of the county-to-county total worker flow data is the reconciliation of independent estimates of employment (jobs) with the Census 2000 workers-at-work data. My executive director saw a recent article in the Los Angeles Times about the mismatch between census data and employment and labor force data, and was concerned if this is an issue in our region. My short answer to my ED was, no, the data problems faced in New York and Los Angeles are not that serious in the Bay Area. I also provided him the "long answer" which may prove useful to other metro areas interested in reconciling different data sets. The bottom line is that estimates of TOTAL EMPLOYMENT (i.e., jobs at area of work) SHOULD BE about 7 to 9 percent HIGHER than Census 2000 estimates of workers-at-work (i.e., workers at area of work). It is important to understand that there are important definitional differences between total employment and decennial census-based workers-at-work. Our indepedent estimate of total employment, year 2000, is 3,753,700 total jobs; Census 2000 data on workers-at-work is 3,396,800. This shows that our total employment, unadjusted, is 10.5 percent higher than our census-based workers-at-work. This is a really big difference! AFTER ADJUSTMENTS, the difference between our total employment (adjusted) and census-based workers-at-work is 1.1 percent. There are three main ADJUSTMENTS that are needed to make TOTAL EMPLOYMENT data comparable to census workers-at-work data: 1. Seasonal fluctuations in employment adjustments; 2. Multiple jobholding adjustments; and 3. Weekly absenteeism adjustments. 1. Seasonal fluctuations in employment adjustments. Typically, total employment data is reported on a monthly average as well as an annual average basis. Our independent estimates of total employment are annual averages, and could be adjusted to approximate the number of jobs in the region as of March 2000. In the Bay Area, our state Employment Development Department shows 3,479,100 jobs (wage and salary employment) in March 2000, compared to 3,540,800 jobs for the year 2000 annual average. So, a factor of 0.983 (ratio of March 2000 to Annual Average) is used to adjust the annual average jobs to a March 2000 estimate of jobs. (As a sidenote, employment levels in the Bay Area peaked at 3,636,500 jobs in December 2000, and we lost 318 thousand jobs in 24 months, and we are now at 3,318,700 jobs.) [Note that our state EDD data is based on wage and salary employment data collected in ES-202 records (employment securities, unemployment insurance data provided by employers to every state). Our sister regional agency, ABAG, adjusts the wage and salary employment data to include the "not covered" employment, including: self-employed, unpaid family workers, private household workers, and individuals on unpaid leave from work. EDD shows 3,540,800 Bay Area wage and salary jobs; ABAG shows 3,753,700 total jobs. The California EDD web site is: http://www.calmis.cahwnet.gov/] 2. Multiple jobholding adjustments. The decennial census only collects data on the primary job and the primary workplace location of every worker answering the census long form. It does not collect data on secondary (moonlighting) jobs held by workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) does, however, collect data on multiple jobholding from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Two reports of interest to our community are available from the BLS web site, at: Multiple jobholding by state, 1999-2000: http://stats.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2001/07/rgtrends.pdf New Data on Multiple Jobholding Available from CPS http://stats.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1997/03/art1exc.htm Nationally, 5.6 percent of jobs are the second, or "moonlighting" jobs of resident workers. These multiple jobholding shares range from 3.9 percent in Florida to 10.3 percent in Nebraska. [Can someone check my interpretation of BLS statistics? Is it 5.9 percent of jobs that are second jobs, or is it 5.9 percent of employed residents who have second jobs?] So, the secondary adjustment is to divide your March 2000 total employment estimate by 1.056 (or state-equivalent value) to prepare an estimate of "March 2000 primary jobs." 3. Weekly absenteeism adjustments. The decennial census asks whether the worker was AT WORK during the census reference week (typically thought of as the last week of March 2000.) The difference between employed residents (employed civilians plus armed forces workers) and worker-at-work (persons reporting a workplace and a means of transportation to work) is typically called "weekly absentees." Nationally, 2.0 percent of employed residents were absent from work during the census reference week. This "weekly absenteeism rate" is easily computed using readily available data from Census 2000 Summary File #3. The disconnect in this methodology is that the weekly absenteeism rate is for area-of-residence, and that adjustments are basically needed for area-of-work data. My method was to use the county-of-residence weekly absenteeism rate (which ranges from 1.87 percent in Santa Clara County to 2.48 percent in Solano County) and apply these to our estimates of total jobs by county-of-work. Or, you can use a regional or statewide weekly absenteeism rate as the basis for this adjustment. So, the third adjustment is to REDUCE the "March 2000 primary jobs" by about 2.0 percent to account for weekly absentees. The results is "March 2000 workers-at-work." The adjustments for the Bay Area region are as follows: 3,753,700 = ABAG Total Employment, Annual 2000 3,688,300 = ABAG Total Employment, March 2000 Adjusted (Step #1) -177,000 = Estimate of Secondary Jobs (Step #2) -77,300 = Estimate of Weekly Absentees (Step #3) 3,434,000 = Estimate of ABAG Total Workers-at-Work in Bay Area, March 2000. 3,396,800 = Census 2000 workers-at-work. Difference between Independent Job Estimates and Census Journey-to-Work is effectively 1.1 percent. Not too bad at a regional level, but differences range from -10.2 percent to +6.3 percent at our county level. Additionally, adjustments to independent employment estimates may be needed to prepare more refined estimates of the self-employed and the unpaid family workers once data from the 1-percent and 5-percent PUMS data is available. **************************** Another data issue in preparing Census 2000 workers-at-work data for comparison purposes is the treatment of out-of-town workers (i.e., business persons on business trips to or from your region.) In the Bay Area we have 20,900 resident workers who are out-of-town on business during census reference week; and 40,200 out-of-town residents working in our region during the census reference week. My assumption is that the 40,200 out-of-town residents (from Los Angeles, Maricopa Counties, etc.) DO NOT HAVE REGULAR JOBS in the BAY AREA, and I do not include them in my "workers-at-work in Bay Area" estimates. I DO consider the Bay Area resident workers who are on business trips to Los Angeles, Phoenix, D.C., New York, etc., TO HAVE REGULAR JOB LOCATIONS IN THE BAY AREA, so I include these 20,900 resident workers in my "workers-working-in-Bay Area" estimates. [You may or may not agree with this interpretation. That's OK.] **************** The last data issue is to make certain you have a chance to read the Census Bureau's concerns about group quarters labor force issues. Please read the "Summary File 3: Data Note #4 - Updated December 2002" on page 960 of the SF3 documentation: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/doc/sf3.pdf The Bureau is finding a "college town" issue in terms of patterns of missing responses to variables on the individual census form (group quarters questionnaire) and that the possible impact is a nationwide underestimate of 235 thousand employed persons, out of 129.7 million employed persons. ****************************************** Well, I hope this e-mail piques your interest, and I hope that I'm not too far off-base in terms of how to adjust and interpret all of this data. [Perhaps we can re-write this and include it in a future edition of the CTPP Newsletter?] If and when responding to my e-mail, be sure NOT to include my full e-mail in your response! Thanks! Chuck Purvis, MTC ************************************************************** Charles L. Purvis, AICP Principal Transportation Planner/Analyst Metropolitan Transportation Commission 101 Eighth Street Oakland, CA 94607-4700 (510) 464-7731 (office) (510) 464-7848 (fax) www: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/ Census WWW: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/ **************************************************************

23 years, 3 months

Re: [CTPP] In central city vs not in central city

by celia.g.boertlein＠census.gov

You are presumably using the Norfolk-etc., MSA as an example. Note that there is a line break (space) between the line "Not in central city" and the list of counties that are components of the MSA. The indent on the "Not in central city" is at the same depth as those for the counties listed after the line break. It is not that the counties listed are in the portion of the metropolitan area outside the central cities. These are the counties that are the components of the entire metro area. In Virginia, independent cities are county equivalents, so the 5 central cities appear as not only central cities but, because they are independent cities, they must also appear as counties which are components of the MSA. If you look at a table that has numbers rather than percentages, or even a simpler metro area (like Ocala, FL) it may be more apparent as to what lines add up to what. -- Celia G. Boertlein Journey-to-Work and Migration Statistics Branch Population Division U.S. Bureau of the Census Washington, DC 20233-8800 phone: (301)763-2454 fax: (301)457-2481 email: Celia.G.Boertlein(a)Census.GOV "Rob CASE" <RCASE(a)hrpdc.org> To: <ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net> Sent by: cc: owner-ctpp-news@c Subject: [CTPP] In central city vs not in central city hrispy.net 03/14/2003 11:27 AM In one of the GCT-P12 tables on the census website, 5 of the localities in our metro area are listed both under "in central city" and "not in central city". I also saw the same problem for other metro areas. I think the census bureau may have made a mistake in this. I thought at first that the bureau put PART of these 5 localities (say the urbanized portion) under "in central city" and PART of them in "not in central city", but the data listed next to both rows for each of the 5 is the same, so this explanation is not valid. (Note: The table to which I'm referring is a companion table to the table which was the subject of yesterday's post from Celia Boertlein. To get to it: Go to http://www.census.gov Click on "American FactFinder" in dark blue area on left. Click on the words "Data Sets" mid-way down page in blue area. Click on "Geographic Comparison Tables" on right. Leave geographic type as "Nation". Click on "United States and Puerto Rico -- Metropolitan Area, in Central City, Not in Central City, County, and (in selected states) County Subdivision" on table format below. Click on "Next". Click on "GCT-P12 -- Employment Status and Commuting to Work" table. Click on "Show table". It's a large table, so it takes a while to load.) Do you agree that it's wrong for a locality to appear under both "in central city" and "not in central city"? Who should I contact at the bureau to get this fixed? Rob Robert B. Case, PE, PTOE Principal Transportation Engineer Hampton Roads Planning District Commission 723 Woodlake Dr., Chesapeake, Va. 23320 voice:757-420-8300; fax:757-523-4881 rcase(a)hrpdc.org

23 years, 3 months

In central city vs not in central city

by Rob CASE

In one of the GCT-P12 tables on the census website, 5 of the localities in our metro area are listed both under "in central city" and "not in central city". I also saw the same problem for other metro areas. I think the census bureau may have made a mistake in this. I thought at first that the bureau put PART of these 5 localities (say the urbanized portion) under "in central city" and PART of them in "not in central city", but the data listed next to both rows for each of the 5 is the same, so this explanation is not valid. (Note: The table to which I'm referring is a companion table to the table which was the subject of yesterday's post from Celia Boertlein. To get to it: Go to http://www.census.gov Click on "American FactFinder" in dark blue area on left. Click on the words "Data Sets" mid-way down page in blue area. Click on "Geographic Comparison Tables" on right. Leave geographic type as "Nation". Click on "United States and Puerto Rico -- Metropolitan Area, in Central City, Not in Central City, County, and (in selected states) County Subdivision" on table format below. Click on "Next". Click on "GCT-P12 -- Employment Status and Commuting to Work" table. Click on "Show table". It's a large table, so it takes a while to load.) Do you agree that it's wrong for a locality to appear under both "in central city" and "not in central city"? Who should I contact at the bureau to get this fixed? Rob Robert B. Case, PE, PTOE Principal Transportation Engineer Hampton Roads Planning District Commission 723 Woodlake Dr., Chesapeake, Va. 23320 voice:757-420-8300; fax:757-523-4881 rcase(a)hrpdc.org

23 years, 3 months

Out-of-Town Business Travelers in county-to-county flow

by Chuck Purvis

TO: CTPP-News The following is an e-mail that I posted to our BayAreaCensus listserv before I went on vacation on 2/28. It's yet another explanation on why we have some apparently very long-distance commuters. Good for us, one of our local reporters re-posted my message to the Investigative Reporters & Editors Census Listserv (IRE), so I hope I was able to help out in regards to interpreting these numbers. Phil's explanation in the message posted to the State Data Center listserv is another (of course, correct) interpretation of these data. It would be interesting to give a common name for these folks, say, "out-of-town business travelers" or some such term.... Chuck Purvis, MTC ******************************************************************************************************************************* The county-to-county data will show data for commuters living in one county and working in a distant county, say, workers residing in Alameda County and working in Los Angeles County. These are probably legitimate responses from legitimate workers, perhaps travelling salesman or other business persons who do, in fact, live in Alameda County and who happened to be in Los Angeles on business during the census reference week (typically, last week of March 2000). Remember, Census 2000 asks "At what location did this person work LAST WEEK?" The census does *NOT* ask "And where did you START your commute from last week, your home? or somebody else's home? or some hotel?" We just do not know the start location of the journey-to-work based on information collected in the decennial census. We can infer that most people start their commute trip from their own home, but we can't definitively state that all workers start work from home. (Perhaps this is why we call this data the "journey-to-work" package, and NOT the "journey-from-home-to-work" package?) So, later this summer when we get the county-to-county commuters by means of transportation to work, we'll certainly have some folks who live in Honolulu and commute to San Francisco by subway in only 20 minutes. This will be good for a few cheap giggles, but THIS ISN'T THE STORY! These are just representative of fairly small numbers of travelling business people who happen to be away from home when they reported their commutes to work! My recommendation would be to lump these ultra-long distance "commuters" into an "at work, but out-of-town" category, for purposes of reporting the data to customers. *************************************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************** Charles L. Purvis, AICP Principal Transportation Planner/Analyst Metropolitan Transportation Commission 101 Eighth Street Oakland, CA 94607-4700 (510) 464-7731 (office) (510) 464-7848 (fax) www: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/ Census WWW: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/ **************************************************************

23 years, 3 months

Commuting Patterns Questions

by Chuck Purvis

The following is a message just posted on the State Data Center listserv. Chuck Purvis, MTC ****************************************************************************************************** To All Leads, Coordinating, and Affiliate Agencies: Below are two questions that were posed regarding the County-to-County Worker Flow files. Phillip Salopek of POP division has responded to them. >From the desk of Phillip Salopek... Question: Does anybody know why a zero value would show up in the commuting patterns file? For example, in the "live in?work in" file, the tables tell me that of the workers who live in Choctaw County, none work in Baldwin County. If nobody who lives in Choctaw County works in Baldwin County, why does it appear in the file at all? This is a minor point, but there has to be an explanation for why the files were constructed that way, and I am curious. Answer: There are some flows of size zero that show up in the Census 2000 County-to-County Worker Flow files. They should not be there. If they had been noticed prior to the release of the file they would have been deleted. These flows result from the fact that there are records in the source files for which the person weight is zero. Although this is relatively rare, it does happen and is not a mistake. One explanation is that weights may be set to zero in cases where an area was oversampled. There may also be other reasons for weights to be zero. At any rate the zero flow records should be ignored. Question: I'm surprised about the lack of buzz on the SDC Listserve in regard to the commuting (county to county) numbers. In NH at least, the numbers are positively wild. We have more people commuting to Ariz, Calif and other western states than we do commuting to some NH counties! I know some airline pilots do often commute very long distances, but NH does not have that many pilots in total. Is there a rationale for continental commuting distances? I'm not talking about 2 people to CA and 4 to AZ. I'm talking about 5 to 40 people "working" in more than a dozen western and mid-western states. Answer: The Census 2000 County-to-County Worker Flow files contain data derived from the long form question, "At what location did this person work LAST WEEK?" If the person worked at more than one location they are instructed to print where they worked most last week. Thus, these data are tagged to a particular reference week. People are not being asked their usual workplace location. What these data show is that during any given week, work arrangements are highly variable. It is likely that most of these long distance commutes reflect normal business travel. A person in another city on a business trip for 3 or more days during the reference week would show up in the data as one of these long distance commuters. Some of the phenomenon may also be due to workers in the military, as well as people who may be temporarily working far away, perhaps staying there temporarily or during the week and returning home on weekends. While there may not be much concern over the number of residents of a county who seem to be away from their normal work location any given week, these numbers can be quite valuable for the receiving county. It may be very useful to know that there can be a significant number of people working in the area who are not reflected in other data sources because they don't live in the immediate vicinity. If you have any further questions, please contact Phil at: Phillip.A.Salopek(a)Census.gov. Thanks, Renée Jefferson-Copeland Customer Liaison Office Census Bureau

23 years, 3 months

Re: [CTPP] 2000 Census data by MSA

by celia.g.boertlein＠census.gov

Basic characteristics for metropolitan areas are available from Summary file 3 in the geographic comparison tables. The following is the one that contains information on commuting -- http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GCTTable?_ts=65628243259 "Andrew PICKARD" <APICKARD(a)hrpdc.o To: <Ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net> rg> cc: Sent by: Subject: [CTPP] 2000 Census data by MSA owner-ctpp-news@c hrispy.net 03/13/2003 11:09 AM Is anyone aware of the existence of tables comparing 2000 Census data by MSA? Ideally it would include travel time and mode for the trip to work. Any help is appreciated. Thanks! Andrew Pickard, P.E. Senior Transportation Engineer Hampton Roads Planning District Commission 723 Woodlake Drive Chesapeake, VA 23320 Phone: (757) 420-8300 Fax: (757) 523-4881 E-mail: apickard(a)hrpdc.org Web: www.hrpdc.org

23 years, 3 months

RE: [CTPP] 2000 Census data by MSA

by Srinivasan, Nanda

Attached is a spreadsheet that contains comparisons for some transportation related characteristics collected from the decennial census. We posted this a while ago to the listserve. The data have been summarized only for LARGE MSAs (population greater than 1 million). Thanks Nanda Srinivasan -----Original Message----- From: APICKARD(a)hrpdc.org Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2003 11:06 AM To: Ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: [CTPP] 2000 Census data by MSA Is anyone aware of the existence of tables comparing 2000 Census data by MSA? Ideally it would include travel time and mode for the trip to work. Any help is appreciated. Thanks! Andrew Pickard, P.E. Senior Transportation Engineer Hampton Roads Planning District Commission 723 Woodlake Drive Chesapeake, VA 23320 Phone: (757) 420-8300 Fax: (757) 523-4881 E-mail: apickard(a)hrpdc.org Web: www.hrpdc.org

23 years, 3 months

2000 Census data by MSA

by Andrew PICKARD

Is anyone aware of the existence of tables comparing 2000 Census data by MSA? Ideally it would include travel time and mode for the trip to work. Any help is appreciated. Thanks! Andrew Pickard, P.E. Senior Transportation Engineer Hampton Roads Planning District Commission 723 Woodlake Drive Chesapeake, VA 23320 Phone: (757) 420-8300 Fax: (757) 523-4881 E-mail: apickard(a)hrpdc.org Web: www.hrpdc.org

23 years, 3 months

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