Description

PAIDHOUR is a dichotomous variable indicating whether the respondent was paid by the hour for their current job or not. Researchers should use the EARNWT weight with this variable.

PAIDHOUR is one of the Outgoing Rotation/Earner Study questions.

Comparability

This variable is comparable across years.

Information about hourly pay status was collected beginning in 1982, as part of a series of questions about usual weekly and hourly earnings. The Census Bureau reports that the results in the CPS public use files for this data series included errors for ASEC files prior to 1989. As a result, these variables are only available in ASEC data through IPUMS CPS from 1989 forward. Monthly data is available from 1982 forward.

According to Technical Paper 66, issued jointly by the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, individuals eligible for the earner study are civilians age 15 and older in rotation groups 4 or 8 who are not self-employed.

This is true for data from 1989 forward, but in the data itself, the universe for 1982 to 1988 is civilians age 14 and older in rotation groups 4 or 8 who are not self-employed.

 In any given month, approximately 1/4 of the CPS sample is in the earner study and each household should appear in the earner study exactly twice. Based on documentation from Unicon and NBER, and after an inspection of the original CPS data, we recommend that users impose the CPS eligibility restrictions in any analyses of earner study variables.

Universe

Flags

Unharmonized Variables

• UH_ERNHSTA_B1
• UH_ERNPDH_A1
• UH_ERNPDH_B1
• UH_ZERNPDH_A1