Support #1413
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Variables for employment
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Description
Hello,
I am trying to understand what is the best variable to use in order to understand if a person is employed.
I found two variables that seem helpful, but I have a few questions about them:
1) The variable employ: this variable seems to be useful, but I don't understand what the "proxy" values (-7) are, and why in Wave 3 there are different interpretations for the values 1 and 2 (in the indresp datasets).
2) The second variable that seem to work is jbsemp (employee or self-employed), but can I be sure that if a person has a value of -8 (inapplicable) it necessarily means that he/she is unemployed?
One final question, can this information (employed/unemployed) be derived directly from variables for working hours or income (such as jbhrs or paygu_dv) using the inapplicable values (-8)?
Thank you very much!
Lior Shabtai
Updated by Alita Nandi about 4 years ago
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Hello Lior,
If you would like to know a person's main employment status then use the variable JBSTAT. If you would like to know whether they have been in paid employment in the last week (prior to the interview) and whether they have been looking for a job in the past 4 weeks, then use the variable JBHAS & JBOFF & JULK4Wk. There are various reasons why the answer to these two sets of questions may not be the same. For example, if a person is retired but works from time to time, then they would say they are retired in JBSTAT, but would say that they have been in paid employment in the past week in JBHAS.
To understand who gets asked which question, please refer to the questionnaire, where below each question there is a field called UNIVERSE, which shows who was eligible for that question.
To know more about what each missing value means: https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/documentation/mainstage/user-guides/main-survey-user-guide/missing-values
Hope this helps.
Understanding Society User Support Team
Updated by Understanding Society User Support Team about 3 years ago
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Lior Shabtai) - % Done changed from 70 to 100