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.

Bureau of Labor Statistics > Office of Survey Methods Research > Publications > Browse Research Papers

Using Point and Intervalized Data in Occupational Employment Statistics Survey Estimates

David S. Piccone and Teresa E. Hesley

Abstract

The Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics produces detailed occupational employment and wage estimates. To reduce response burden, the OES form asks respondents to report the number of employees by wage interval. Many of OES's larger respondents, such as the Federal Government, report data electronically, providing wage rates for each of their employees, or "point data", which OES then reclassifies into wage intervals for estimation. A mean wage rate is calculated for each interval from a secondary source and given to all employees within the interval. Capturing and integrating point-data wage distributions into estimation could increase the accuracy of estimates. This paper describes the research and implementation of mean and percentile wage estimators, along with variances estimators, using available point data wage data.