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127 Monthly Lab. Rev. 3 (2004)
What Can Time-Use Data Tell Us about Hours of Work

handle is hein.journals/month127 and id is 1491 raw text is: What can time-use data tell us about hours of work? Estimates of hours worked from the CPS are very close to estimates from the ATUS for CPS reference weeks; however, CPS reference weeks are not representative of the entire month Harley Frazis and Jay Stewart Harley Frazis and Jay Stewart are research economists on the Employment Research and Program Development Staff, Office of Employment and Unemployment Statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics. E-mail: Frazls.Harley@bls.gov StewartJay@bls.gov V7T:he number of hours people work for pay is an important economic measure. In addi- tion to being a measure of labor utilization, it is a component of other economic statistics. For example, productivity measures are computed by dividing total output by total hours worked, and hourly wages are often computed by divid- ing usual weekly earnings by usual weekly hours worked) There are two major sources of hours data for the United States-the BLS Current Popu- lation Survey (CPS) and the BLS Current Employ- ment Statistics survey (CES)-and estimates of weekly hours from these two surveys behave dif- ferently for a variety of reasons. The goal of this article is to use data from the new American Time Use Survey (ATus) to shed light on the accuracy of hours-worked reports in the cps. Because the purpose of this study is to determine whether respondents report hours correctly in cPS, it does not examine other factors that could result in dif- ferences in estimates of hours worked from cps and ATUS. In addition to differences in the report- ing of hours, differences in estimates can be due to differences in sample composition and differ- ences in the reporting of other variables.2 We control for these other factors, but do not analyze their effects on differences in estimates. We ex- amine the effect of these other factors on com- parisons of weekly hours from CPS and ATUS in a forthcoming publication.3 Previous studies Previous studies that assess the accuracy of hours data from establishment surveys either compare hours data for the same industries across surveys, or evaluate accuracy using cog- nitive methods such as focus groups and inter- views with respondents.4 The former approach allows researchers to document differences be- tween surveys (after accounting for differences in concepts), while the latter provides informa- tion on how respondents compile their data. Studies that are directed at verifying hours mea- sures from household surveys such as the cPS typically take one of two approaches: they com- pare weekly hours reports from a cPs-like ques- tion either to (1) records from the individual's employer or (2) data collected from the individual using a time diary. Studies by Wesley Mellow and Hal Sider5 and Willard L. Rodgers, Charles Brown, and Greg J. Duncan6 took the first approach. Both studies assumed that employer-reported hours were correct, and that any difference between the two measures was due to respondent error. The Mellow and Sider study found that, com- pared with employer reports, respondents overreported hours by 3.9 percent on average, and that overreporting was greater for self re- spondents than when a proxy provided the information (4.3 percent versus 3.4 percent). They also found that overreporting was greater among managerial and professional workers (11 percent). However, because these workers tend to be salaried, it seems unlikely that their employers kept records of their ac- tual hours worked and instead reported the hours of a standard workweek. Monthly Labor Review December 2004 3

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