500 – Evaluation and Research on the Current Population Survey
Overview of Current Population Survey Methodology
Yang Cheng
U.S. Census Bureau
Patrick Flanagan
U.S. Census Bureau
Eric Slud
U.S. Census Bureau
The Current Population Survey (CPS) is one of the oldest, largest, and most well recognized surveys in the United States. It produces monthly household information about employment, unemployment, and other characteristics of the civilian non-institutionalized population. In this paper, we will evaluate the CPS sample design and estimation procedure, with specific attention to research problems in the areas of rotating panel design, sample size, systematic-sampling interval, AK composite estimate, and replication variance estimates. We will provide some comments and suggestions for future research, and suggest some ways to improve current CPS methods.