Brief Overall Description of the Dataset:
Information on employees, layoffs, job openings, and new hires in survey format for American businesses.
Link: http://www.bls.gov/jlt/
Date Inventory Completed: 6/4/15
Screening
- Is the data collected opinion-based?
- Is the data collection recurring (must be collected at least annually)?
- Is there data available for 2013?
- For Education: Is the data collected at least the school level?
- Can we access the data by August 15th?
- Can the data be linked to other education/workforce datasets (e.g., K-12, higher education, workforce)?
Purpose
What is the purpose of the organization collecting the data?
“These data serve as demand-side indicators of labor shortages at the national level. Prior to JOLTS, there was no economic indicator of the unmet demand for labor with which to assess the presence or extent of labor shortages in the United States. The availability of unfilled jobs—the job openings rate—is an important measure of the tightness of job markets, parallel to existing measures of unemployment.”
Why is it collected and how does the organization use it?
It’s collected to inform the government, businesses, and general public about the health of the labor market. The organizations compiles the survey data, makes estimates, and cleans the data before releasing it.
Who else uses the data?
Lawmakers, investors
- Who do they sell the data to?
N/A
Method
What is the data collection method?
Business submit their employment records to BLS
What is the type of data collected?
Administrative
If designed, who created the questions?
N/A
What is the raw source of the collected data (prior to any aggregation)?
Individual businesses’ employment records.
Description
- What is the general topic of the data (1-2 words)?
Workforce
What are the earliest and latest dates for which data is available?
2001-April 2015
Is data collected and available periodically?
Yes
How soon after a reference period ends can a data source be prepared and provided?
Roughly one month
Selectivity (conversely, the representativeness)
What is the universe (e.g., population) that the data represents (consider inclusion/exclusion criteria)?
16,000 businesses from across the country
Accessibility
How is the data accessed?
Online
- Is it open data?
Yes
- Any legal, regulatory, or administrative restrictions on accessing the data source?
Can’t get records at the individual business level because of privacy restrictions
Cost? - One time or annual or project based payment?
N/A
Does this dataset appear to meet our needs for the Census study? NO
Explanation: The granularity of the data are very large since only 16,000 businesses are sampled, and they are protected under privacy regulations. These estimates are primarily used to measure national business health. These data could be used if we have specific workforce data from states that they take to measure the accuracy of the estimates.