[Federal Register Volume 70, Number 73 (Monday, April 18, 2005)]
[Notices]
[Pages 20177-20180]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 05-7689]
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DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
Office of the Secretary
Submission for OMB Review: Comment Request
April 8, 2005.
The Department of Labor (DOL) has submitted the following public
information collection request (ICR) to the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) for review and approval in accordance with the Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13, 44 U.S.C. chapter 35). A copy of
this ICR, with applicable supporting documentation, may be obtained by
contacting Darrin King on 202-693-4129 (this is not a toll-free number)
or e-mail: [email protected].
Comments should be sent to Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs, Attn: OMB Desk Officer for the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS), Office of Management and Budget, Room 10235, Washington, DC
20503, 202-395-7316 (this is not a toll-free number), within 30 days
from the date of this publication in the Federal Register.
The OMB is particularly interested in comments which:
Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is
necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency,
including whether the information will have practical utility;
Evaluate the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the
burden of the proposed collection of information, including the
validity of the methodology and assumptions used;
Enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the
information to be collected; and
Minimize the burden of the collection of information on
those who are to respond, including through the use of appropriate
automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection
techniques or other forms of information technology, e.g., permitting
electronic submission of responses.
Agency: Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Type of Review: Revision of a currently approved collection.
Title: Report on Current Employment Statistics.
OMB Number: 1220-0011.
Form Number: BLS-790 Series.
Type of Response: Reporting.
Affected Public: Business or other for-profit; Not-for-profit
institutions; Federal Government; and State, local, or tribal
government.
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Number of Minutes per Frequency of Annual Annual burden
Form respondents report response responses hours
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BLS-790A--Natural Resources 1,400 10 Monthly.......... 16,800 2,800
and Mining.
BLS-790B--Construction....... 12,800 10 Monthly.......... 153,600 25,600
BLS-790C--Manufacturing...... 18,000 10 Monthly.......... 216,000 36,000
BLS-790E--Service Providing 153,300 10 Monthly.......... 1,839,600 306,600
Industries.
BLS-790G--Public 56,700 5 Monthly.......... 680,400 56,700
Administration.
BLS-790S--Education.......... 4,000 5 Monthly.......... 48,000 4,000
BLS-790F1, F2, F3 (Fax Forms) 36,400 10 Monthly.......... 436,800 72,800
-----------------
Total.................... 282,600 .............. ................. 3,391,200 504,500
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Total Annualized capital/startup costs: $0.
Total Annual Costs (operating/maintaining systems or purchasing
services): $0.
Description: The Current Employment Statistics program provides
current monthly statistics on employment, hours, and earnings, by
industry. CES data on employment, hours, and earning by industry are
among the most visible and widely-used Principal Federal Economic
Indicators (PFEIs). CES data are also the timeliest of all PFEIs, with
their release by BLS in the Employment Situation on the first Friday of
most months. The statistics are fundamental inputs in economic decision
processes at all levels of government, private enterprise, and
organized labor.
Proposed Changes to the Current Employment Statistics Survey: The
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is planning several changes to the
Current Employment Statistics (CES) survey to improve its relevance to
the needs of primary data users, as well as its value as an input to
other key economic statistics. To implement the needed changes while
maintaining the viability of the CES program as a high volume, quick
turnaround, voluntary survey, BLS carefully reviewed the public's use
of CES data to determine if reductions could be made in some series as
a tradeoff for significant data improvements. The reductions help to
maintain the viability of the CES survey by keeping the survey form at
one-page in length and the number of data items requested of employers
to a minimum.
Planned Changes
The planned improvements to the CES are:
New data on the hours and regular earnings of all employees.
New data on total earnings--both regular and irregular pay--for all
employees.
The CES series that BLS proposes to discontinue to accommodate the
above improvements are:
Women worker employment series.
Production or nonsupervisory worker hours and earnings series.
A brief discussion of the benefits of the planned improvements and
the reasons for discontinuing the CES women and production and
nonsupervisory workers series follows.
Discontinuation of CES women workers series--The CES plans to
discontinue the collection and publication of data on women workers
with the release of May 2005 data scheduled for publication in July
2005. The Bureau has three reasons for proposing to drop the CES women
workers series.
The first is that the series imposes a significant reporting burden
on survey respondents because payroll records do not typically include
gender identification. BLS relies upon the voluntary cooperation of
approximately
[[Page 20178]]
155,000 businesses each month (representing about 400,000 individual
worksites) in providing information from their payroll records on the
employment, hours, and earnings of their workers. In an increasingly
difficult data-collection environment, survey response burden is a
crucial factor in survey design.
Second, the CES women workers series are little used. Recent BLS
analysis of information from its public use website found that while
there was an average of 130,000 requests per month for CES national
estimates, only about one-half of one percent of those requests were
for the women worker employment series. Additionally, an informal
internet literature search by BLS found almost no usage of CES women
worker series. Articles which addressed women's employment and earnings
issues nearly all used data from the BLS Current Population Survey
(CPS) as their source.
Third, BLS will continue to provide extensive labor market
information on women, primarily from the CPS, a monthly survey of about
60,000 households. From the CPS, users have access to data on women's
employment, unemployment, and earnings by industry, occupation,
education, age, marital status, and other characteristics.
BLS routinely publishes information in various formats on women in
the workplace. CPS data on women, for instance, are summarized in two
recurring publications:
Women in the Labor Force: A Databook
http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-databook.pdf.
Highlights of Women's Earnings
http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2003.pdf.
Examples of regularly-issued CPS-based news releases that include
data on women are:
Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/wkyeng.pdf.
Employment Characteristics of Families
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf.
College Enrollment and Work Activities of High School Graduates
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/hsgec.pdf.
Beginning with the release of January 2005 data, Current Population
Survey data on employed women by industry is available monthly in Table
A-23 of the BLS periodical Employment and Earnings. The new table is
available on the BLS Web site at ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea23.txt, and shows essentially the same industry detail as
that shown in Table B-13, the table that currently provides the
establishment data on women. Table A-23 will be available on the BLS
Web site each month coincident with the publication of the Employment
Situation news release.
New data on all employee hours and earnings series--The CES program
currently publishes series on the average hours and earnings of
production workers in the goods-producing industries and non-
supervisory workers in the service-providing industries. Production and
non-supervisory workers account for about 80 percent of all employment
measured by the CES survey. The new all employee hours and earnings
series will cover all workers and therefore provide more comprehensive
information than the present series for analyzing economic trends. They
will also provide improved input for other major economic indicators,
including series on nonfarm productivity and personal income. BLS has
tested the collection of all employee hours and earnings data with CES
respondents and found the data to be available from the payroll records
of most employers. The CES survey will begin collecting all employee
payroll and hours data in mid-2005. Publication of the first all
employee hours and earnings series, on an experimental basis, is
scheduled for mid-2006. Publication of official published series is
scheduled for early 2007.
New data on gross monthly earnings--This series will have a broader
scope than the base CES earnings data. The current CES average hourly
and weekly earnings series for production and non-supervisory workers,
as well as the new series planned for all employees are designed to
measure the regular earnings of workers; they exclude bonuses and other
irregular payments received by employees from their employers. The
gross monthly earnings series will include these irregular payments
providing an additional and more comprehensive measure of earnings. The
base average hourly earnings series will continue to provide a measure
of underlying wage trends exclusive of irregular payments. The gross
monthly earnings series is expected to be particularly valuable for
improving the accuracy of preliminary estimates of personal income in
the national income accounts. Pilot tests with CES survey respondents
indicate that most will be able to readily provide this information
from their payroll records. The CES survey will begin collecting gross
monthly earnings data in mid-2005. Publication of the first gross
monthly earnings, on an experimental basis, is scheduled for mid-2006.
Publication of official published series is scheduled for early 2007.
Discontinuation of production/non-supervisory worker hours and
earnings series--These series will be phased out after the new all
employee hours and earnings series are well established. The
production/non-supervisory worker series limited scope makes them of
limited value in analyzing economic trends. Just as important to this
decision, the production and non-supervisory worker hours and payroll
data have become increasingly difficult to collect, because these
categorizations are not meaningful to survey respondents. Many survey
respondents report that it is not possible to tabulate their payroll
records based on the production/non-supervisory definitions.
Discontinuation of the production/non-supervisory worker hours and
earnings series is scheduled for early 2010.
Public Comment
In accordance with the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act
of 1995, BLS posted a notice describing these planned changes in the
Federal Register on December 22, 2004 [http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/06jun20041800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2004/E4-3731.htm]. The
60-day public comment period for this Federal Register notice ended on
February 22, 2005.
Comments Received Following the First Federal Register Notice and BLS
Response
Extensive comments were received as a result of the pre-clearance
consultation Federal Register notice, Volume 69, Number 245, published
on December 22, 2004.
1. A few commenters supported the BLS plan for Current Employment
Statistics (CES) program changes, including former BLS Commissioner
Katharine Abraham and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Supporters of
the plan voiced a common opinion, as expressed by Dr. Abraham: ``The
positive reason for dropping the women worker question is to make room
on the CES survey instrument for the new all-employee questions the BLS
has proposed. The lack of timely information on all-employee earnings
has been a long-standing problem for the Bureau of Economic Analysis in
its construction of the national income and product accounts and the
lack of information on all employee hours is a potential source of bias
in BLS estimates
[[Page 20179]]
of the rate of growth in productivity. Because the survey sample is so
large and because responses must be collected within a very short
timeframe, it is not feasible to collect more than a small number of
elements on the CES survey.''
2. A small number of the comments received expressed concern about
the loss of production worker hours and earnings series, believing it
should continue to be published in addition to the proposed all
employee hours and earnings data. BLS is planning a multi-year overlap
period (July 2006-December 2009) when both all employee and production
worker hours and earnings series will be published. We will reassess
our plans to drop the production worker hours and earnings series about
a year before the planned discontinuation date, drawing on the
experience of data users and survey respondents during the overlap
period before making a final decision.
3. The majority of comments objected to the planned discontinuation
of the women worker employment series, but many appeared to be based on
a misunderstanding of the CES data. They referenced the presumed loss
of data on women's earnings, occupations, or other information that
have in fact never been available from the CES program. In all
likelihood, the commenters were confusing the CES with the Current
Population Survey (CPS) or household survey. The household survey does
provide data on earnings, occupations, and other labor force
characteristics by gender. Collection of all this data through the CPS
will continue.
Following are additional specific comments regarding the planned
discontinuation of CES women worker series. The comments are grouped by
the three reasons BLS has cited for proposing to discontinue the
series.
Use of CES Women Worker Series
4. A number of commenters indicated that CES women worker data were
widely used by researchers. BLS reviewed all of the articles cited by
commenters as well as conducting our own informal internet search for
research on women's employment issues. Of the scores of articles on
this topic, only 6 articles (covering a 20-year span) were found that
contained any CES women worker data; these papers all used additional
data sources in conjunction with the CES information.
5. A number of comments indicated that the CES data on women
workers were necessary to formulate public policy for working women and
to track women's progress in the workplace. However, without
information on occupation, hours, or earnings by gender, the CES
provides relatively little information for these purposes. The CPS
provides much more information on the employment and labor force
characteristics of women and thus is more useful for formulating policy
or evaluating women's progress.
CPS Data on Women as a Substitute for CES Data on Women
(Note the italicized comments included below are drawn verbatim from
a form letter used by the majority of commenters.)
6. With a gender breakdown, the payroll survey is capable of
painting a reliable picture of where women are working across
industries and business cycles. Without a gender breakdown, that
picture becomes far more difficult to obtain. While the CPS is valuable
for other types of information, its smaller sampling size produces a
greater margin for error than the CES survey. It is true that CPS data
are subject to larger sampling error than the CES estimates owing to
the smaller sample size of the CPS. However, because the CPS provides
many more characteristics for women workers, it is an overall richer
source of data for women workers than the CES. In addition, while we
have publicly stated that the CES is superior to the CPS for analyzing
month-to-month trends, we believe that such short term measures are not
appropriate for most assessments of the changing status of women (or
any demographic group) in the labor market. When examining longer term
trends, the advantage the CES has in sample size declines in
importance. The two surveys have displayed similar trends for women's
employment growth over the past several years.
7. The CPS' reliance on household interviews introduces the
possibility of subjective reporting bias that does not exist with the
payroll survey. All surveys are potentially subject to non-sampling
errors or biases of various types. While we have no quantitative
measures of the degree of non-sampling error in the household versus
the payroll survey, it is likely that the payroll survey provides
better industry coding than the household survey because the codes
originate from businesses.
8. The CPS historical time series of employment by industry is not
seasonally adjusted and not as long as the CES employment by industry
time series. The CPS North American Industry Classification System
(NAICS)-based time series begins in 2000. The CES NAICS-based time
series begins in 1964. As part of the conversion to NAICS, CPS industry
data for 2000 through 2002 were re-coded using the new industry
classification system. BLS provided this re-coded information to the
public via microdata files and its website. This information could be
used by researchers to reconstruct the CPS series for earlier time
periods. Additionally, the large amount of research on women's issues
that uses the CPS data suggests that the lack of seasonal adjustment of
the CPS industry series is not a major liability.
The Respondent Burden of CES Women Workers Data
9. Some commenters indicated that reporting employment data for
women is not an added burden for businesses, because they are already
subject to EEO reporting requirements. While it is true that most large
firms are required to comply with EEO by submitting an employer
information report (EEO-1), this is a once-a-year report while the CES
is a monthly report. Additionally, the individuals who complete the CES
report often indicate that gender information is not present on their
standard payroll records and that they do not have ready access to the
data. As evidence of respondent burden, out of every six employers who
provide total employment counts, one does not provide the additional
data on female employment.
10. Some respondents indicated that hours and earnings for women
along with other demographic information should be added to the CES
survey. Others questioned whether the BLS rationale of eliminating
women worker collection to make room for other data items of more
interest was necessary.
The CES is a large survey (400,000 worksites) which operates under
very tight time constraints (data are published each month, only three
weeks after the reference period); it relies on voluntary self-
reporting from most of its sample members. Because of this demanding
production environment, BLS believes that it is important to minimize
the number of data items collected and to request data that are readily
available on payroll records. These measures help minimize respondent
burden and therefore maximize the number of surveyed businesses that
are willing and able to supply data. Maximizing the number of survey
responses is important to ensuring reliable estimates. The CES
estimates of nonfarm employment which appear in the BLS Employment
Situation news release are among the nation's most visible and
sensitive economic indicators. BLS needs to ensure that the reliability
of these
[[Page 20180]]
estimates is not jeopardized by overloading the survey.
11. Some commenters indicated that the CES survey was mandatory,
thus there should be no problem in collecting any type of data. Others
suggested that because the survey was voluntary, it did not generate a
respondent burden, because businesses were free to refuse.
The CES survey is mandatory by State law in five States
(California, Oregon, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Washington).
In all other States the CES survey is voluntary. It is precisely
because of the largely voluntary nature of the survey that BLS must
minimize the reporting burden to businesses. If the survey is perceived
as too time consuming or burdensome, a high refusal rate may result,
which would decrease the accuracy of the published estimates.
Ira L. Mills,
Departmental Clearance Officer.
[FR Doc. 05-7689 Filed 4-15-05; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 4510-24-P