Abraham suggests Current Population Survey tweaks
Elisabeth Buckwald, writing for MarketWatch, reports that the Current Population Survey (CPS) conducted every month by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been showing inexact results about the real unemployment rates, failing to capture non-traditional and non-primary work as indicators of employment status. Many workers were not reporting side hustles or other freelance work as additional jobs since CPS was only capturing main jobs as a measure of wage rate.
Since the survey sample was not an accurate representation of the population, Faculty Associate Katherine Abraham indicated, based on her studies, that approximately 22% of the altogether CPS respondents categorized as not having any job had their employment status misclassified. Abraham’s results showed that “additional probing into working arrangements may help uncover more meaningful insights about the workforce that would not appear in the Current Population Survey otherwise.”