Confidentiality-protected and integrated employer-employee microdata—including worker and firm demographics, worker attachments to firms, earnings, and precise coding of location of place of work and place of residence—have been used to investigate a variety of questions in economics and demography. The rich geographic dimension of these integrated microdata, however, has yet to be fully exploited by the regional science community. This article describes the structure, applications, and confidentiality protections of integrated employer-employee microdata housed at the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program at the U.S. Census Bureau. The LEHD Program makes use of administrative records from nearly the entire universe of existing firms and workers for forty participating states. The broad coverage of economic agents in conjunction with the precise coding of geography makes the data particularly suitable for addressing issues in urban and rural economic development, agglomeration and growth, economic geography, and spatial econometrics.
Abowd, John M., and Julia I. Lane. 2004. New approaches to confidentiality protection, synthetic data, remote access and research data centers. U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Technical Paper no. TP-2004-03. http://lehd.dsd.census.gov.
2.
Abowd, John M., Paul Lengermann, and Kevin McKinney. 2002. The measurement of human capital in the U.S. economy. U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Technical Paper no. TP-2002-09. http://lehd.dsd.census.gov.
3.
Abowd, John M., and Lars Vilhuber. 2005. The sensitivity of economic statistics to coding errors in personal identifiers. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics23: 133-152.
4.
Abowd, John M., Lars Vilhuber, Bryce Stephens, Frederik Andersson, Kevin L. McKinney, Marc Roemer, and Simon Woodcock. 2005. The LEHD infrastructure files and the creation of the Quarterly Workforce Indicators. Prepared for the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Income and Wealth, Washington, DC, April 2005.
5.
Anas, Alex, Richard Arnott, and Kenneth A. Small. 1998. Urban spatial structure. Journal of Economic Literature36: 1426-1464.
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Andersson, Fredrik, Simon Burgess, and Julia Lane. 2005. Cities, matching and the productivity gains of agglomeration. U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Working Paper. http://lehd.dsd.census.gov.
7.
Andersson, Fredrik, Harry Holzer, and Julia Lane. 2005. Moving up or moving on. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
8.
Andersson, Fredrik, Julia Lane, and Erika McEntarfer. 2004. The labor market outcomes of low-wage workers and public assistance recipients: The role of individual, firm, and industry characteristics. Report to the Department of Health and Human Services. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.
9.
Anselin, Luc. 2003. Spatial externalities. International Regional Science Review26: 147-152.
10.
Benedetto, Gary, John C. Haltiwanger, Julia Lane, and Kevin McKinney. 2005. Using worker flows in the analysis of the firm. May. U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Technical Paper no. TP-2003-09. http://ssrn.com/abstract=608221.
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Feser, Edward, and Stuart H. Sweeney. 2006. On the state of the geography in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Covered Wages and Employment (ES-202) series. International Regional Science Review29: 247-263.
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Florax, Raymond J. G. M., and Arno J. van der Vlist. 2003. Spatial econometric data analysis: Moving beyond traditional models. International Regional Science Review26: 223-243.
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Freedman, Matthew, Julia Lane, and Marc Roemer. 2005. An analysis of the use of administrative records to improve place-of-work coding on survey data. U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Technical Paper. http://lehd.dsd.census.gov.
14.
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Glaeser, Edward L.1998. Are cities dying?Journal of Economic Perspectives12: 139-160.
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Glaeser, Edward L., and Jesse Shapiro. 2001. Is there a New Urbanism? The growth of U.S. cities in the 1990s. NBER Working Paper no. 8357, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.
17.
Haltiwanger, J., J. Lane, J. Spletzer, J. Theeuwes, and K. Troske. 1998. Overview of the International Symposium on Linked Employer-Employee Data. Monthly Labor Review121: 48-49.
18.
Haltiwanger, J., J. Lane, J. Spletzer, J. Theeuwes, and K. Troske. 1999. The creation and analysis of employer and employee matched data. Contributions to Economic Analysis Series. Amsterdam: North Holland.
19.
Lane, J., S. Burgess, and J. Theeuwes. 1998. The uses of longitudinal matched employer/employee data in labor market analysis. Proceedings of the American Statistical Association. Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association.
20.
Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program. 2002. The Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Program: Employment Dynamics Estimates Project versions 2.2 and 2.3. U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Technical Paper no. TP-2002-05. http://lehd.dsd.census.gov.
21.
Mix, Wende. 2005. Evaluating the local employment dynamic program as an alternate source of place of work data for use by transportation planners. January. Working Paper, Buffalo State University, NY.
22.
Stevens, David. 2002. Employment that is not covered by state unemployment. U.S. Census Bureau, Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Technical Paper no. TP-2002-16. http://lehd.dsd.census.gov.
