Measuring the u.s. employment situation using online panels: the yale labor survey

This study presents the design and results of a rapid-fire survey that collects labor market data for individuals in the United States. The purpose is to test online panels for their application to social, economic, and demographic information as well as to apply this approach to the U.S. labor market. The Yale Labor Survey (YLS) used an online panel from YouGov to replicate statistics from the Current Population Survey (CPS), the government’s official source of household labor market statistics. The YLS’s advantages included its timeliness, low cost, and ability to develop new questions quickly to study unusual labor market patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from the YLS track employment data closely from the CPS during the pandemic. Although YLS estimates of unemployment and participation rates mirrored the broad trends in CPS data, YLS estimates of those two rates were less accurate than for employment. The study demonstrates the power of carefully crafted online surveys to replicate expensive traditional methods quickly and inexpensively. 1 The authors of this report are Christopher Foote, senior economist and policy adviser, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; Tyler Hounshell, Tobin Predoctoral Program, Yale University; William Nordhaus, Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University; Douglas Rivers, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University, and Chief Scientist at YouGov; and Pamela Torola, Tobin Predoctoral Program, Yale University. We thank William Bannick of YouGov for outstanding assistance with this project. Alan Gerber, Matthew Shapiro, and Jason Faberman provided helpful suggestions in the design and execution of the project. (File is YLS-Report041521a-text.docx.) 2 Corresponding author is William Nordhaus (william.nordhaus@yale.edu). 3 The survey received initial Yale IRB approval on April 10, 2020 and has received further approvals as it has been revised. Foote, Hounshell, Nordhaus, and Torola declare no financial conflicts of interest with the research. Rivers has a conflict of interest as an employee and shareholder in YouGov. The views expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not indicate concurrence by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the principals of the Board of Governors, the Federal Reserve System, or of any of the organizations with which the authors are affiliated. The initial surveys were conducted by YouGov for their own research purposes, and the ones after April 15 were financed by the Tobin Center at Yale University, the Cowles Foundation at Yale University, the MacMillan Center at Yale University, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Lounsbery Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation. The present paper draws upon a preliminary report in Foote et al. (2020).