Reconciling Survey and Administrative Measures of Self-Employment

Katharine Abraham, John Haltiwanger, Claire Hou, Kristin Sandusky and James R. Spletzer

Journal of Labor Economics, 2021, vol. 39, issue 4, 825 - 860

Abstract: Good information on self-employment is needed to inform the ongoing discussion of the rise of the gig economy and its implications for workers. Tax data show significant growth in self-employment not captured in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC). The growing gap reflects both self-employment in tax data missing from the CPS-ASEC and self-employment misreported as wage and salary work. We document consistent patterns in the discrepancies between the tax and survey data but are able to explain only a modest share of the growing disagreement between them.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/712187 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/712187 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
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:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/712187

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().