U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Department of Labor Logo United States Department of Labor
Dot gov

The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you're on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

June 1997

Is the ECI sensitive to the method of aggregation?

Michael K. Lettau, Mark A. Loewenstein, Aaron T. Cushner

Research by Bureau of Labor Statistics economists indicates that the Employment Cost Index (ECI) is not particularly sensitive to the methodology used in constructing the index. Also, because changes in the price of labor can be due to shifts in supply, demand, or both, caution should be used when applying standard index number analysis to the ECI. The two aggregation issues discussed in this article are: how the various job quotes within a given cell should be combined to obtain a cell average and the way cell averages are aggregated to obtain the actual index.

Download PDF »