Labor Market Data

Bureau of Labor Statistics home page

This site contains an easy to use search form to select the BLS labor series that are most appropriate.

Current Population Survey (CPS)

A survey of approximately 50,000 households that is administered on a monthly basis.

DataZone

This site, provided by the Economic Policy Institute, contains a variety of historical statistics on wages, income, employment, and related variables. Income and earnings series are available for alternative levels of educational attainment, geographical region, race, and gender.

Chicago Health and Family Life Survey

This 1995-1997 survey collects extensive information on sexual activities, fertility, relationship formation, and the educational and demographic characteristics of a Chicago sample of individuals aged 18 to 59.

Chinese Health and Family Life Survey

This 1999-2000 survey collects extensive information on sexual activities, fertility, relationship formation, and the educational and demographic characteristics of a Chinese sample of individuals aged 20 to 64.

Early Childhood Longitudinal Study

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study consists of two sets of panel data: one that follows a sample of children from birth to age 6 and a second that follows children from kindergarten through elementary school. An extensive collection of family background variables are included in these surveys.

Economagic: Economic Time Series Page

This page contains direct links to an extensive collection of labor market time-series data.

European Community Household Panel

The European Community Household Panel is a longitudinal survey of 60,500 households beginning in 1994 and continuing through 2001. Data is available on income, demographic factors, labor supply, education, and health.

Family Life Surveys

The RAND Corporation conducted Family Life Surveys in Malaysia, Indonesia, Guatemala, and Matlab, Bangladesh. Data is available on a variety of individual, household, and community characteristics. Data is available on income, education, health status, and labor market activities.

Foreign Labor Statistics

This page, provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, contains data on foreign wages and productivity.

German Socio-Economic Panel

The German Socio-Economic Panel contains longitudinal data on over 12,000 households, beginning with a 1983 base year. Data is available in SPSS, SAS, Stata, and ASCII formats. (Stata, in particular, now has an SOEP menu command available that allows the user "directly to select variables, observations, etc., and automatically create data retrievals on your computer." When a variable is selected, all years of data are imported.)

General Social Survey data

The General Social Survey (GSS) has been conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) since 1972. It contains responses from numerous questions dealing with social and political attitudes, and also contains a fair amount of economic and demographic information. You can browse and search through the variable list at this page. This data may also be downloaded from either Berkeley's online data archive (this site contains a nice extract facility that also creates a codebook for the extract file) or from Queens College. The Queens College site also contains a nice downloadable DOS-based extract program that makes it possible to construct your own extracts from one or more years of data. A program containing a searchable annotated bibliography of studies conducted using this data is also available.

Hispanic Population of the United States

This Census Bureau web site contains demographic, educational, employment, and other statistics for the Hispanic population in the U.S.

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series - U.S. (IPUMS-USA)

The IPUMS files have been created by the Historical Census Project at the University of Minnesota. These are public use microdata files from U.S. national censuses conducted between 1850 and 2000. Data files have been organized in a consistent way for each census. An extract program is available at this site that construct subsets containing fewer observations and/or variables.

Integrated Public Use Microdata Series - International (IPUMS-International)

The IPUMS files have been created by the Historical Census Project at the University of Minnesota. These are public use microdata files from a growing collection of countries.

International Data Base (IDB)

This online database provided by the U.S. Census Bureau contains labor market and demographic information for all countries in selected years between 1950 and the present.

Labour Economics Gateway: Statistics and Datasets

The Labour Economics Gateway provides a collection of links to a variety of international sources of labor-related statistics and datasets.

National Health and Family Life Survey

This 1992 survey collects extensive information on sexual activities, fertility, relationship formation, and the educational and demographic characteristics of a U.S. sample of approximately 2500 individuals aged 18 to 44.

National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health)

This data collection is a longitudinal survey of adolescents who were enrolled in grades 7 through 12 in 1994. The data was collected at individual, family, school, and community levels.

National Longitudinal Surveys

This web site contains links to the data and codebooks for:

• National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97)
• National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79)
• NLSY79 Children and Young Adults
• National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Women and Mature Women (NLSW)
• National Longitudinal Surveys of Young Men and Older Men

National Longitudinal Survey of the High School Class of 1972

The National Longitudinal Survey of the High School class of 1972 provides a rich data set on a large sample of individuals who were high school seniors in 1972. Many of these individuals were followed up in five subsequent follow-up surveys, ending in 1986. Information on ordering the CD containing the data is available through this site.

National Survey of America's Families

The National Survey of America's Families is a longitudinal study that began with a 1997 sample of over 44,000 households containing over 100,000 adults. This study is sponsored by the Urban Institute and focuses "on the economic, health, and social characteristics of children, adults under the age of 65, and their families."

The National Survey of Families and Households

This longitudinal study (base-year interviews in 1987-88 and a follow-up in 1992-94) includes data from a sample of over 9,000 households. Each respondent was asked questions about their family background, educational attainment, marital and fertility history, and employment and labor market experiences.

National Survey of Family Growth

A nationally representative survey of women designed to measure factors related to births, pregnancy, and women's reproductive health. (Men were surveyed for the first time in Cycle 6 in 2002.) The data is downloadable from the site or may be ordered on a CD.

Office of Population Research (Princeton University)

This demographic research center provides a several useful data sets that are of interest to labor economists. Among these are:

• American Fertility Surveys,
• Priceton European Fertility Project,
• Fragile Familes and Child Wellbeing Study,
• Hutterite Fertility Survey,
• Latin American Migration Project (LAMP),
• Little Village Surveys,
• Mexican Migration Project (MMP),
• National Migration Study in Thailand (NMST),
• New Immigrant Survey (NIS),
• OECD Tables of Populations and Deaths,
• Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project (THIOP),
• World Fertility Surveys.

Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)

The Panel Study of Income Dynamics is a rather large longitudinal data set that began in 1968 with a sample of approximately 5,000 households. Followup interviews have been conducted with these households and splitoffs from these households that occurred as children left home, or households split because of divorce, separation or death. This data set contains a great deal of information on marital patterns, fertility, educational attainment, labor market experiences, public assistance, housework time, geographic mobility, health, and many other topics. Data from this study may be downloaded from this site, or ordered on a CD-ROM. An online extract facility is also available to construct subsets of the data that may be downloaded.

Taiwan Women and Family Studies

This 1989 survey contains information on a sample of 3,803 women aged 25 to 59 in Taiwan. This study focuses on the determinants and consequences of labor market activity and the interrelationships among labor market activity, physical and psychological wellbeing, and family relationships.

U.S. Census Bureau DataFerrett

This service, provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, makes it possible to create extracts of data from any of the following data sets:

• American Community Survey (ACS)
• American Housing Survey (AHS)
• Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
• Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES)
• Current Population Survey (CPS)
• Decennial Census of Population and Housing (Census2000)
• National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS)
• National Center for Health Statistics Mortality-Underlying Cause-of-Death (MORT)
• National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HANES)
• National Health Interview Survey (NHIS)*
• National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS)
• National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (FHWAR)
• Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)
• Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD)

After selecting the variables that you wish to extract from these data sets, a downloadable extract file is created and stored at the Census Bureau's ftp site. The use of this program requires a fair amount of free browser memory cache. Data files created by this program can be extremely large. Use this system carefully and be sure to only extract those variables that you require for your analysis.

Minimum wage data from Card and Krueger, Myth and Measurement

The data that was used in the controversial studies by Card and Krueger.

Panel Study of Income Dynamics

One of the earliest and largest longitudinal studies designed for labor and demographic studies. The original 5,000 families were first interviewed in 1968 and have been followed up annually. The entire data set is available on the web. Don't think about downloading this, however, unless you have a large amount of free disk space. Check the file sizes before downloading.

Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)

A very large collection of data sets that are designed to evaluate the effects of government programs on labor market outcomes. SIPP data consists of a continuous series of panel data collections. The initial sample in each panel contains 14,000 - 36,700 respondents who are followed for 2 1/2 to 4 years.

Wisconsin Children, Incomes, and Program Participation Survey (CHIPPS) of 1985

The Data and Program Library Service at the University of Winsonsin-Madison, provides downloadable data and documentation from this study of support services for children.

Wisconsin Learnfare Program data

This study was designed to evaluate the effect of Wisconsin's Learnfare program in which welfare benefits were reduced if students in the household failed to meet attendance requirements. A control group that was not part of the experiment constitutes 50% of the sample.

Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

The Data and Program Library Service at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, provides downloadable data and documentation from this 35 year study of 10,317 Wisconsin men and women who graduated from Wisconsin high schools in 1957. Data is available on their demographic background, youthful aspirations, education, family formation, and labor market experiences.