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Bureau of Labor Statistics > Office of Survey Methods Research > Publications > Browse Research Papers

Numerical Comparison of Small Domain Estimators

Rachel M Harter, Julie Gershunskaya, John L Eltinge, Larry Huff, and Sarah Lehan

Abstract

The Current Employment Statistics Program (CES) uses a large-scale sample survey to produce monthly estimates of total employment, earnings and hours worked in the U.S. labor force. For some general background on this program, see Bureau of Labor Statistics (1997), Werking (1997),

Butani et al. (1997), West et al. (1997) and references cited therein. Historically, methodological work for the CES has focused on production of national- or state-level estimates within specified industries. However, many stakeholders

recently have expressed strong interest in the development of methodologically sound estimates of total employment for relatively small domains. For the current study, these domains are defined by the intersection of major industrial divisions (MIDs, as defined under the Standard Industrial

Classification system) with Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs).