Washington, D.C. - U.S. Representatives Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3), Chris Van Hollen (MD-8 ), and Hilda L. Solis (CA-32) along with sixty five Members of the House today urged the Bush Administration to continue collecting data on women workers in the payroll survey. In a letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the lawmakers said “the Department of Labor has seriously undervalued the importance of the women worker series, ignored broad public support for its continuation, and failed to demonstrate that discontinuing the series will provide any benefit in reducing the burden on survey respondents.”
During the initial 60-day comment period on the proposed changes, the Bureau of Labor Statistics received nearly 5,000 comments, 90 percent of which urged it to continue collecting the data on women workers. Many of these comments cited studies that used the data to uncover important conclusions about the position of women in the workforce and were carried out by organizations such as Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Economic Policy Institute, and the Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau of the State of New Hampshire.
Earlier this year, Van Hollen, DeLauro and a bipartisan group of legislators – including the co-chairs of the Congressional Women’s Caucus and Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi – asked the Bureau of Labor Statistics to reconsider its decision to discontinue the data collection.
The lawmakers wrote to the OMB, the agency now charged with reviewing the rule change. More than twenty senators sent a similar letter today, making this a bi-cameral and bi-partisan effort.
“To address gender issues in the workplace, women’s contributions to the workforce must be measured,” said DeLauro. “The women worker series provides valuable information and is particularly important to end long-standing economic discrimination against women.”
“The value of this data far outweighs the burden of providing it,” said Van Hollen. “Information regarding women’s employment is vital for policymakers. Without it, we would not have a complete picture of employment changes in our country.”
“Historically women have had to struggle to make it to the top of the employment ladder. As Democratic Chair of the Congressional Caucus on Women’s issues, I know how important data can be to assess the challenges facing women workers especially minority workers in the workforce and to reach equality,” said Congresswoman Solis.
The full text of the letter follows.
May 18, 2005
The Honorable Josh B. Bolten
Director, Office of Management and Budget
725 17th St. NW
Washington, D.C. 20503
Dear Director Bolten:
We are writing to express our concern about the Department of Labor’s plan to discontinue the women worker series as part of its proposed changes to the Current Employment Statistics program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which it forwarded to you for comment and approval on April 8, 2005.
We feel that in considering this drastic change, the Department of Labor has seriously undervalued the importance of the women worker series, ignored broad public support for its continuation, and failed to demonstrate that discontinuing the series will provide any benefit in reducing the burden on survey respondents. We strongly urge you to require the Department to reverse its decision to eliminate this important series.
Accurate gender employment information is vital to end the long-standing economic discrimination against women in our society. Women today are disproportionately employed in certain industries, often-lower-paying occupations, and they have far lower lifetime earnings than men. Researchers, policymakers, Congress, and the Administration all need the accurate data on women’s employment provided by the series to understand gender inequality in the workforce, and to guide efforts to eliminate it.
The recent recession marked the start of the only period of sustained job loss for women in the last forty years. At a time when women’s employment may be changing in fundamental ways, we should be expanding—not reducing—our ability to understand the evolving role of women in the nation’s labor force. It is imperative for policymakers and researchers to continue to have access to the best data available on this issue.
The Department has provided no evidence that eliminating the series will reduce the burden of the survey on employers. The women worker series is only a small part of the survey that, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own estimate, takes only seven minutes to fill out. Companies with 100 or more employees already have to submit EEO-1 forms detailing the gender breakdown of their workforce, so it is rare that any payroll system does not already include gender. In smaller companies, it is little burden to obtain the number of male and female employees. Any reduction in burden is tiny, compared to the significant loss caused by eliminating the data series.
During the initial 60-day comment period on its proposed changes, which ended February 22, 2005, the Bureau received nearly 5,000 comments, 90 percent of which urged it to continue collecting the data on women workers. Many of these comments cited studies that used the CES data to uncover important conclusions about the position of women in the workforce and were carried out by organizations such as Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Economic Policy Institute, and the Economic and Labor Market Information Bureau of the State of New Hampshire.
These studies would have been impossible without the women worker series. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has argued that the Current Population Survey provides an adequate substitute for the CES data, but economists, including those in the Bureau, widely agree that the Payroll Survey provides a far more accurate view of general employment trends than the Population Survey. As BLS Commissioner Kathleen Utgoff testified to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee in 2003, “the payroll survey provides more reliable information on the current trend in wage and salary employment” than the household survey, because the payroll survey has a larger sample and is linked to the total employment count, based on records of the unemployment insurance tax.
In light of the importance of the women worker series, the small burden it imposes, and the strong public support for its continuation, we urge you to direct the Department of Labor to continue to collect these important data.