workers in their POWPUMA

Mara Kaminowitz over 5 years ago

Hello,

I am trying to extract workers at their place of work from the 1-year ACS microdata but I am having a hard time figuring out the right variables. I have an Access database with the 1-year data so I am looking for the correct query. If I pull all records where Employment status recode is 1 (Civilian employed, at work), 2 (Civilian employed, with a job but not at work), 4 (Armed forces, at work), and 5 (Armed forces, with a job but not at work) along with the POWPUMA number and the person weight, will that get me the correct number?

I tried getting it from iPUMS but for some reason even with selecting out only employed ESR codes I kept getting a number that looked closer to the residential population than the number of workers for each POWPUMA/county. I used to rely on DataFerret but it no longer works on my computer at all, even using their very specific technical requirements.

Thanks,

Mara

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Mara Kaminowitz over 5 years ago

Thanks for the tip about the other states, that is relevant to my region and I should have thought of that. In general, does the query I mentioned get me the number of workers in each PUMA (assuming I add the POWSP too)? Do I need to add additional variables or change the query?
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Mara Kaminowitz over 5 years ago

Thanks for the tip about the other states, that is relevant to my region and I should have thought of that. In general, does the query I mentioned get me the number of workers in each PUMA (assuming I add the POWSP too)? Do I need to add additional variables or change the query?
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Jonathan Schroeder over 5 years ago in reply to Mara Kaminowitz

Hi Mara,

You should be getting the correct numbers of workers by workplace POWPUMA if you combine IPUMS USA variables PWPUMA00 and PWSTATE2. A PWPUMA00 code of 00000 identifies anyone not in the universe (persons age 16+ who worked last week), so you needn't use employment status or any other variable to get the correct counts.

I just tried this with 2017 1-Year ACS PUMS, and the numbers I get are consistent with the expected universe--not the total residential population. I wonder if the numbers you originally got were a consequence of not including the PWSTATE2 variable?

Also note: If you ever have trouble with IPUMS data, please feel free to ask a question (or look for answers) in the IPUMS User Forum at https://forum.ipums.org/.

-Jonathan
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