Description

UNION indicates whether, for the current job, the respondent was: 1) a member of a labor union or employee association similar to a union; 2) not a union member but covered by a union or employee association contract; or 3) neither a union member nor covered by a union contract. Researchers should use the EARNWT weight with this variable.

Comparability

This variable is comparable for almost all available samples. In the November 1986 basic monthly sample, the data to determine if the respondent was covered by a union contract but not a member of a union was not available. Only the original data about union membership was present in the original public use data.

Information about union membership was collected in the ASEC CPS beginning in 1983, as part of a series of questions about usual weekly and hourly earnings. The Census Bureau reports that the results in the ASEC CPS public use files for this data series included errors for years prior to 1990, so for the March ASEC supplements only data from 1990 forward are part of IPUMS-CPS.

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.  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_UNCOV_B1
• UH_UNMEM_A2
• UH_UNMEM_B1