4 TAKEAWAYS:
➀ There’s a hack for thinking of the overall workforce. The Wall Street Journal’s Paul Overberg asked fellows to think of the workforce by envisioning three enclosed circles. The largest contains everyone who can be working at any given time – anyone over 16 years of age. Within it, the second largest circle is labeled the “civilian labor force.” As Overberg explained, these are people who may be retired, disabled, or enrolled in school as full-time students. Lastly, the final and smallest circle is one labeled “employed (workers).” For older people, the latter two circles tend to fluctuate. “If we’re thinking about older workers, a fair number of people are in that outer ring; they’ve retired or they’re disabled. Or they would like to work, they’re not really retired, but they’re doing something that doesn’t count as work in the official definition.” So using the term “retired” is inherently complicated, Overberg said, especially considering the effects of both the pandemic and the recession. [Transcript | Video]
➁ The use of microdata can make information more manageable. Overberg advised narrowing down research, and there’s a way to do it. Using data from the American Community Survey (ACS), the Census Bureau creates over 1,000 tables of information that collect older workers’ full or part-time employment status, in addition to their age and gender. But in order to condense that information into more easily understandable data, they created what is known as the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS). “We’re talking about seven million rows of data, and all the questions are sort of coded into a couple hundred columns of ones and zeros and things. They abstract a 1% sample of that. They strip out any identifying information and they make that available.” Journalists can use this information to look at patterns within the overall statistics, specifically if they want to examine causes and changes to older folks’ participation rates in the workforce. “You can actually query, and they standardize the questions and the sort of the categories across these surveys.”
➂ The ACS’s compiled data is free and available for journalists. “The American Community Survey is, I think, the largest ongoing household survey in the world,” said Overberg. For journalists, leveraging the survey results is key to understanding the aging workforce. Focus on two key tables: one with the employment rates of workers over 60 and another with statistics for workers over 65. This data manages to compile their earnings, employment status, and potential disability status. Also, a key component of ACS data lies within the journalist-centered information site titled censusreporter.org. “It’s built by journalists, for journalists. Anybody can use it. It’s free. And what it holds is the most recent year of ACS data, the most recent one-year and five-year data,” Overberg told fellows. “You will see right from the homepage, it’s very easy to drill in by subject or by geography, and then go across from one to the other.”
➃ Using Census Bureau tools help specify research. Journalists covering older workers need to identify patterns, Overberg said. The Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics compiles data from different states in order to create a database that helps zero in on the specific worker information for specific locations. Information collected from different states allows the Census Bureau to create a “massive data cleaning and stitching together operation” that yields a database with enough information aggregated to reveal patterns by age and area. “[The dots on the map] are scaled by color and size to the number of people at that precise location. So, you can see this data is really, really local. This data really helps people who are covering one city or one county to zoom in and visualize it, as well as download the tables that this thing will produce as well.”
This program is sponsored by AARP. NPF is solely responsible for the content.
