 The Labor Market Impact of a Pandemic: Validation and Application of a Do-It-Yourself CPSAlexander Bick and Adam Blandin No 2031, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Abstract: The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a central source of U.S. labor market data. We show that, for a few thousand dollars, researchers can quickly design and implement their own online survey to supplement the CPS. The survey closely follows core features of the CPS, ensuring that outcomes are conceptually compatible and allowing researchers to weight and validate results using the official CPS. Yet the survey also allows for faster data collection, added flexibility and novel questions. We show that the survey provided useful estimates of U.S. labor market aggregates several weeks ahead of the CPS during the turbulent start of the COVID-19 recession. We then assess the extent of downward nominal wage rigidity at the onset of the pandemic, finding that wage reductions were widespread, but were more common for job-switchers and recalled workers. We discuss a wide range of additional applications. Keywords: labor market survey; real-time data; nominal wage rigidity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:feddwp:89244 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from DOI: 10.24149/wp2031 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Contact information at EDIRC. |
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