Non-Substantive Change Request (adding temporary workers detail item)

Request for a Non-Substantive Change to the

U.S. Department of Commerce / U.S. Census Bureau

Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization

OMB Control Number 0607-0175

The Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization (QPC) is co-funded by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) and the Defense Logistics Agency. The QPC collects data on establishment operational status, value of actual production, estimated production attainable at full and emergency conditions, and the reasons for operating at less than full production capacity. The survey also collects data on work patterns by shift that includes days per week in operation, plant hours per week in operation, weeks in operation in the quarter, and number of production workers for the quarter. The Survey is directed quarterly to approximately 7,500 manufacturing and publishing establishments selected from the Economic Census.

Using data from this voluntary survey, the Census Bureau produces statistics on the rates of capacity utilization and plant hours per week in operation. The QPC is the only source of quarterly statistics on U.S. industrial capacity. The current information collection (OMB Control Number 0607-0175) is approved through 08/31/2015. At the request of the FRB, The Census Bureau requests to add the number of temporary production workers as a separate question on the QPC. This detail was last collected in 2006 when the survey was conducted on an annual basis and was known as the Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization (SPC). When the SPC transitioned from an annual to a quarterly survey, the question was discontinued. The Federal Reserve Board would now like to resume collecting this information.

The FRB will use the data on the number of temporary production workers in each industry to construct the share of temporary production workers by industry (the QPC already collects information on the number of production workers including temporary workers). The FRB will use information about the share of temporary workers to prepare more accurate measures of output used in the Federal Reserve’s Index of Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization (IP). For many industries, the monthly IP statistics use data on production worker hours that are adjusted to account for the labor input of temporary employees. When detailed information on temporary workers was collected in the SPC, these data were used in making that adjustment. Currently, the adjustment is made through an estimation procedure.

The additional detail asked of the 7,500 respondents will take 5 minutes on average to provide each quarter. The estimated increase in burden is 2,500 hours. The proposed version of the questionnaire including the additional question is shown in Attachment A.

Respondents will be informed of the new item on the cover of their instruction booklet that will be mailed with their survey form. Attachment B shows the Instruction booklet.

The contact person for questions relating to this collection is David Gromos, Chief of the Special Studies Branch in the Census Bureau’s Manufacturing and Construction Division. He can be reached on (301) 763-4659.

Attachments:

1. Proposed updated version of Form MQ-C2, “Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization”

2. Proposed updated version of Instructions MQ-C2-I “Instructions for the Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization”