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Consumer Expenditure Surveys

2025 Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) Microdata Users’ Symposium

Thank You for a Highly Successful 2025 Symposium!

The 2025 Consumer Expenditure Surveys Microdata Users' Symposium (July 17) has concluded. Based on comments from attendees and observations of planners, this symposium was well received and highly successful. The planners wish to thank our presenters (see below) for a series of excellent presentations. Of course, there would be no symposium without attendees, and we appreciate their investment of time and effort to spend the day with us at the "virtual" Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). As usual, our attendees represented a wide range of specialties and occupations. From academia, they included students and professors. They also represented various federal agencies, and private enterprises. Furthermore, they joined from all over the world.

Request for Comments

Symposium attendees were sent a feedback survey to obtain comments from attendees to help us maintain and improve the quality of future symposiums/workshops. If you attended and provided comments, thank you. However, perhaps you did not have an opportunity to comment on a specific topic; you have had additional thoughts after the symposium; or you would like to follow up on a topic discussed during the session. If so, we invite you to participate by providing your comments at any time by email.

Looking Ahead

Next workshop. The next workshop will be held in July of 2027. To those who have never attended a workshop, but are interested in doing so, the planners look forward to answering any questions you may have. If you have already attended one, we hope you will join us again. The format varies from year to year as we incorporate recommendations from attendees, so that your experience at the next workshop will differ from that of the workshop(s) you previously attended. Regardless, the workshop is always free of charge to participants; that is, there is never a registration fee for the workshop.

Call for Presenters. Note that it is not too early to consider presenting your work at the 2027 event. Each year, we seek presentations giving practical examples of how the CE microdata can be used in research. Work from first-time and novice users is as welcome as work from experienced users. We only ask that your emphasis be on how the data were used, questions or problems encountered, and similar discussion (i.e., application of the data, rather than hypotheses tested or statistical methods used). (Note: The link for the call-for-presenters is forthcoming, but other than the deadline for submission, the basic procedures are not likely to change from 2025.)

Presentations at the 2025 Consumer Expenditure Surveys Symposium

Research Presenters

(in order of presentation)

  • Who Pays for Childcare? Social Norms, Household Spending, and the Child and Dependent Care Credit
    • Danyang Zhang, PhD (The University of Akron, presenter), Timothy Bond (Purdue University)
  • An Exploratory Study of Household Alcohol Consumption from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey with a Focus on Market Conditions and Regulatory Structures
    • Mayya Makarycheva, PhD (Industry Professional)
  • The Ins and Outs of Recreational Spending in the United States
    • Jonathan Peters, PhD (The City University of New York, presenter), David King (Arizona State University), Mark Stroud (The College of Staten Island)
  •  The Road to Clarity: Where Consumption, Expenditures, and Outlays Part Ways
    • Jake Schild, PhD (Former BLS Research Economist)
  • Storytelling with FRED® Graphs: CE Data at Your Fingertips
    • Diego Mendez-Carbajo, PhD (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)

BLS Presenters

(in order of presentation)

  • Welcome and Overview of the CE
    • Geoffrey Paulin, PhD (Senior Economist with BLS)
  • Sneak Peek: CE Now and into the Future
    • Brett Creech (Supervisory Economist with BLS)

Non-Presenting Planners:

  • Brooke Bahner
  • Bryan Rigg
  • Noell Koehlinger
  • Grayson Armstrong
  • Shane Meyers

Related links:

Last modified date: July 22, 2025