Appendix C: Revisions of the CPS

Each January, the U.S. Census Bureau makes adjustments to the population controls in the Current Population Survey. These adjustments are typically based on revised estimates of net international migration and updated vital statistics. According to a note released by the BLS (“Adjustments to Household Survey Population Estimates in January 2006”), the cumulative effect of the adjustment in January 2006 was to reduce the estimate of the Hispanic working-age population by 108,000, the Hispanic labor force by 87,000 and the number of employed Hispanics by 81,000.

The BLS has also published a methodology that can be used to adjust previously published CPS data for the effects of ongoing January revisions (See “Creating Comparability in CPS Employment Series,” by Marisa L. Di Natale. The report is available at http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpscomp.pdf). That methodology was applied to make revisions to estimates of the Hispanic population, labor force and employment in 2005 and earlier years.

It is assumed in this report that the principal force underlying revisions in the CPS population controls is revised estimates of net international migration. In principle, that means some of the revision could be attributed to emigration by second and third generation Hispanics. However, that effect is assumed to be negligible in the current analysis, and the full extent of the CPS revision for Hispanics was assumed to apply to first-generation Hispanics arriving in the U.S. in 2000 or later. Previously computed distributions of the Hispanic first generation by education, age, industry, occupation, etc. were then utilized to distribute the total change in the Hispanic population along those dimensions.

The January 2005 revisions also affected estimates of the non-Hispanic population, but no adjustments were made to the data to account for the revisions. For whites and blacks, those revisions were very small in proportion to their working-age population and have a negligible effect on comparability of the data over time. However, estimates of the working-age population, labor force, employment and unemployment of non-Hispanic Asians are sensitive to the effects of CPS revisions and should be treated with caution. Rates—the employment rate, labor force participation rate and the unemployment rate—are not affected by the January CPS revisions.