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Consumer Expenditure Surveys
Bureau of Labor Statistics > Consumer Expenditure Survey > Methods

PUMD Documentation

This page contains the documentation for the CE public-use microdata (PUMD).

Additional resources

  • Survey materials lists the documents used to collect data for the Interview Survey and the Diary Survey.
  • Hierarchical groupings (zip) includes a description of each UCC along with its hierarchical standing within each expenditure or income category for a given year. Hierarchical groupings are not available for years prior to 1996. For years 1996-2024, three file types are available. Beginning with 2025, only the integrated groupings are available:
    • Integrated groupings lists UCCs that the CE tables use, and identifies the survey source for the UCCs. These files use this naming convention: CE-HG-Integ-2017.
    • Interview groupings lists the UCCs from the Interview Survey. These files use this naming convention: CE-HG-Inter-2017. Not available for the following years: 1996, and 2025 forward.
    • Diary groupings list the UCCs from the Diary Survey. These files use this naming convention: CE-HG-Diary-2017. Not available for the following years: 1996, and 2025 forward.

      For each UCC, the files provide this information:

    Column Content Start position Options

    1

    		 Type of information in the line 1 1: First line of name
    2: Second line of name
    *: Comment line

    2

    		 Level of aggregation 4 Highest level of aggregation is 1 and lowest 9.

    3

    		 Name of the UCC 7

    4

    		 UCC lists the identifier of the UCC 70

    5

    		 Source or purpose of the UCC 83 I: Interview survey
    D: Diary survey
    G and T: Titles
    S: Statistical UCCs

    6

    		 Factor by which the mean has to be multiplied to match the annualized data in the published tables 86 1: Multiply times 1
    4: Multiply times 4

    7

    		 Data sections 89 CUCHARS: CU characteristics
    FOOD: Food expenditures
    EXPEND: Non-food expenditures
    INCOME: Income types
    ASSETS: Asset types
    ADDENDA: Other financial information and gifts

Last modified date: October 29, 2026