Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics

National QWI (NQWI) Data

• Overview of National Quarterly Workforce Indicators
• Data Sources
• Methodology
• Confidentiality Protection
• Aggregation Levels
• Release Frequency
• Variability Measures
• Seasonal Adjustment
• Downloadable Data
• List of Available Files
• Feedback

Overview of National Quarterly Workforce Indicators

The National Quarterly Workforce Indicators are a set of thirty-two economic indicators that include employment, hires, separations, job creation and destruction, and average earnings. The scope of these estimates are the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Data Sources

The National QWI are derived from existing public-use state-level QWI (see "QWI 101" (1.06 MB) for details). The data underlying the QWI are provided by the Census Bureau's state partners under memorandi of understanding (MOUs). Public-use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages are used indirectly in the imputation methodology.

Methodology

The procedures used by the Census Bureau to construct the National QWI, developed by Abowd and Vilhuber (2010, 2011), take into account the lack of data for certain states and time periods as well as suppressions of certain values in the QWI for statistical disclosure limitation. Using multiple imputation models that account for missing data (Rubin, 1987), the methodology generates a consistent estimate of the national series, including measures of its uncertainty.

More detailed information on the methodology is available in Abowd and Vilhuber (2011), "National estimates of gross employment and job flows from the Quarterly Workforce Indicators with demographic and industry detail", Journal of Econometrics, Volume 161, Issue 1, March 2011, Pages 82-99.

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Confidentiality Protection

The National QWI are entirely derived from public-use data products. For a detailed explanation of the disclosure avoidance techniques used to protect the underlying state-level QWI, see Abowd, et. Confidentiality Protection in the Census Bureau's Quarterly Workforce Indicators (252 KB).

Aggregation Levels

National QWI are produced are limited to NAICS sector level tables for private employers at this time. This may be extended to more detailed industries in a future release.

Release Frequency

National QWI are released with quarterly frequency, with final estimates becoming available near the end of each calendar quarter, shortly after the last state-level QWI have been released. As with the state-level QWI, we currently release full revisions of the entire time-series each time the underlying state-level QWI are revised.

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Variability Measures

Seasonal Adjustment

Seasonally adjusted levels and rates will be released at a later date.

Downloadable Data

Currently, not all tabulation categories present in state-level QWI are available for National QWI. Ongoing work will lead to additional tabulation categories being made available, in line with existing state-level QWI (ownership, lower-level industry classifications).

Data files are provided in CSV format, and can be downloaded from lehd.ces.census.gov/data/qwi/latest_release/us. The format of the file names and data content is described at lehd.ces.census.gov/data/schema/ (see the "version" text files in lehd.ces.census.gov/data/qwi/latest_release/us for the current schema version). These data are also available via QWI Explorer and the LED Extraction Tool.

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List of Available Files

Go to lehd.ces.census.gov/data/qwi latest_release /us to download the three most recent releases of NQWI data. Each release contains the full QWI time series, so we recommend users download the most recent release. The latest quarter of data is typically three quarters behind the quarter of release (four quarters for firm age and size). We recommend that users do not combine data from separate releases.

Feedback

Please send questions and comments to CES.Web.Support.List@census.gov.

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