March Basic Monthly Survey vs. ASEC

The Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC) of the CPS is unique among CPS data files even if it is the most popular of the CPS data. The ASEC includes all March Basic Monthly Survey respondents as well as oversamples from other months (see more information on oversamples).

Users who want to include both the ASEC and the March Basic Monthly Survey, should be aware that both samples have a MONTH value of 3. To make it simple for users to distinguish data from one file versus the other, we have created ASECFLAG.