PUMD Data Files

From 1996 forward, public-use microdata (PUMD) are available in four formats: SAS, SPSS, STATA and Comma Delimited (ASCII). Each format presents the data for each year in two zipped files. Data collected with the Interview Survey are in the “Interview” file and those with the Diary Survey are in the “Diary” file.

Pre-1996 PUMD are available as Comma Delimited files. The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides the data for free to its members. Here is their member list. BLS also sells the data on USB flash drives (PDF).

If you are new to the CE PUMD, you may want to explore the PUMD methodology with the CE PUMD Getting Started Guide and the availability of data with the Dictionary for Interview and Diary Surveys (XLSX). For those using income data in their analyses, we also recommend reading the User's Guide to Income Imputation in the CE. Additionally, we supply training programs and sample data (ZIP), and host a free microdata data users' workshop.

Experimental State Weights, supporting state-level analysis for selected states, are also available with their documentation.

The 2018 PUMD were released on September 10, 2019. To be notified when new datasets become available, please sign up for the CEX e-mail updates. If you have comments, suggestions, and questions about this page and its contents, please contact us.

If you are having difficulty downloading the data, please see the instructions on how to download zip files.

 

Last Modified Date: September 10, 2019