With ES-202, Wage Records, and other files we have created rich and comprehensive databases suitable for the most sophisticated analysis of labor economics, employment and training program evaluation, and the related needs of Workforce Investment Boards and One Stop environments. The administrative records approach documented in this publication represents over five years of effort. The publication includes many new concepts, and contains basic information about the organization and management of data elements. However, it omits examples from ongoing research into the dynamics of employment hires and retention, and the linkage of these time series to current employment estimates and projections. As a baseline document, Wyoming Wage Records is intended to describe basic file content and the development of key concepts and data sets without which analysis would be impossible.
Administrative records represent a mass of data.
This publication chronicles the work of many in organizing these data elements into meaningful classification systems whose test as useful concepts is yet to be realized. In contrast to obtrusive measures, such as the CPS, administrative records contain none of the sampling and non-sampling error associated with surveys. Detecting systematic bias and error in these administrative data rests, almost exclusively, on work involving the development of classification systems and basic tests of consistency among merged data sets. Replication of these tests, we hope, will soon take place in other states. Finally, the underlying theoretical emphasis in the development of administrative data has been pragmatic.