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Activity Number: 117
Type: Contributed
Date/Time: Monday, August 7, 2006 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
Sponsor: Section on Government Statistics
Abstract - #306353
Title: Identifying and Accounting for Mergers and Acquisitions in Measuring Employment
Author(s): Gordon Mikkelson*+ and Linda Unger and Doreen LeBel
Companies: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Labor Statistics and Connecticut Department of Labor
Address: 2 Massachusettes Ave., NE, Washington, DC, 20906,
Keywords: business transfers ; partials ; predecessors ; successors ; linkages ; scoring
Abstract:

The dynamic U.S. economy causes many challenges to accurately measuring employment and wages. One of the more difficult areas is accounting for mergers and acquisitions, also called predecessors and successors. Inaccurate or incomplete measurement leads to overestimation. This paper profiles research findings and describes implementation into the BLS' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program, which is the BLS sampling frame and source of a number of economic series. QCEW data are used to identify job growth and decline. The QCEW program is about to implement an initiative to improve the linkage of transfers of businesses from one record to another. This will clearly distinguish births and deaths from expansions and contractions, recognize possible duplicate or missing reporting, and better target potential linkages using wage records and scoring techniques.


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