The first purpose of the redesign was to change questions in a way that better reflects today's labor market. The labor market has changed considerably in the quarter of a century since the last questionnaire changes. Women's labor force activity has increased dramatically. Single parent households have become more frequent. The population has grown older.
Retirees are now a far larger group than before.
Minority workers constitute a significantly increased part of the labor force. And many more workers now than in the past hold more than one job or engage in part time or temporary work. The agencies wanted to revise the labor force survey questionnaire so that it could take account of these changes and provide more comprehensive information to track new economic developments. They also decided to provide for an overlap sample to evaluate the effect of changes made in the questions. This reduced the disruption involved in changing a major national data collection instrument, because data would be available to help users to separate out the effect of any survey changes from real economic change.