The Evolution of Rotation Group Bias: Will the Real Unemployment Rate Please Stand Up?

Alan Krueger, Alexandre Mas and Xiaotong Niu
Additional contact information
Xiaotong Niu: Congressional Budget Office

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 2017, vol. 99, issue 2, 258-264

Abstract: We document that rotation group bias—the tendency for the unemployment rate to vary systematically by month in sample—in the Current Population Survey (CPS) has worsened over time. Estimated unemployment rates for earlier rotation groups have grown sharply relative to later rotation groups; both should be nationally representative samples. This bias increased discretely after the 1994 CPS redesign, and rising nonresponse rates are likely a significant contributor. Survey nonresponse increased after the redesign, mirroring the evolution of rotation group bias. Consistent with this explanation, rotation group bias for households that responded in all eight interviews remained stable over time.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/REST_a_00630 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Evolution of Rotation Group Bias: Will the Real Unemployment Rate Please Stand Up? (2014)
Working Paper: The Evolution of Rotation Group Bias: Will the Real Unemployment Rate Please Stand Up? (2014)
Working Paper: The Evolution of Rotation Group Bias: Will the Real Unemployment Rate Please Stand Up? (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:restat:v:99:y:2017:i:2:p:258-264

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=0034-6535

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Economics and Statistics is currently edited by Pierre Azoulay, Olivier Coibion, Will Dobbie, Raymond Fisman, Benjamin R. Handel, Brian A. Jacob, Kareen Rozen, Xiaoxia Shi, Tavneet Suri and Yi Xu

More articles in The Review of Economics and Statistics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().