NLSY26 Needs Assessment Listening Session

55 East Monroe Street 30th Floor Chicago IL 60603 office (312) 759-4000 fax (312) 759-4004 www.norc.org

NLSY26 Needs Assessment Listening Session (90 minutes)

Discussion Guide- Employment, Jobs, and the Future of Work

Introduction — ~5 Mins

Welcome the group.

Let them know they’ve been invited to this session to provide feedback on a potential new NLSY cohort. Go over general ground rules below.

• Please turn off your cell phones.

• We request that you join the session using a computer (rather than phone) and please keep your camera on. We’d like this to be a discussion.

• Reminder: Session is being recorded

• Your participation in this survey is voluntary. We are collecting this information under OMB Clearance Number 1225-0088. Without this currently approved number, we could not conduct this information session.

• We expect this session will be about 90 minutes. We have a lot to get through so we will be moving along at a quick pace. I may have to cut you off in order to move on to another topic. If that happens, please do not take it personally.

• You are welcome to use the restroom if needed during the session.

• Additionally, we want to hear from everyone. If you notice that you haven’t spoken up in a while, please do so. I may call on you to get your opinion.

• Please do not interrupt the other person when they are talking.

• Lastly, and most importantly, there are no right or wrong answers. If you disagree with one another, please feel free to verbalize that, but be respectful.

Introduce the NLS — ~ 5 Mins

• There are currently two cohorts on the NLS.

• The first cohort, the NLSY79, consists of about 10,000 men and women who were born in the years 1957-64. They were ages 14-22 when first interviewed in 1979 and are still being interviewed today. In 1986, the NLS began assessing children born to female respondents in the NLSY79-as teenagers they began receiving interviews similar to the NLSY79.

• The second cohort, the NLSY97, consists of nearly 9,000 men and women who were born in the years 1980-1984. They were 12-16 when they were first interviewed in 1997. The NLSY97 also included a parent questionnaire in the first round.

• When NLSY79 and NLSY97 respondents were young they received annual interviews. Fielding for each sample now takes place every other year. The most recent round of data collection for the NLSY97 began fielding in the fall of 2021 and is ongoing. The next round of the NLSY79 will be fielded in the fall of 2022.

• Public-use NLS data may be accessed free of charge from the NLS Investigator-an on-line search and extraction tool. The NLSY79 and NLSY97 questionnaires cover many topics along with employment-including schooling, training, health, family, income and assets, and much more. Another strength of the NLSY79 and NLSY97 is the availability of Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores as well as various measures of non-cognitive skills.

• Key Employment information in the NLS79 and NLSY97:

  • Jobs (an employer is considered a job in these surveys): At each interview the respondent provides information about each job held since the date of the last interview. Jobs are then classified into categories such as employer-based or self-employed.

    • For each employer or job, several characteristics are collected including wages, occupation, industry, hours of work, hours of work from home, benefits offered, and job tasks.

  • Event history of employment dates of employment-including job start and stop dates, dates of gaps within jobs, and dates of gaps between jobs.

  • Job Search: Search within and between jobs, job search-methods.

  • Combination of event-history collection of employment and information of search within and between job gaps allows the construction of timing of unemployment and measures of actual work experience and tenure.

Why we’re collecting feedback — ~ 5 Mins

• Information on the labor market is the traditional bread and butter of the NLS, including research on job transitions, unemployment, determinants of wages and employment, and human capital development.

• A lot has changed about the world of work and about how we collect survey information since the 1997 cohort was launched. We want to ensure that we are measuring the important aspects of jobs and the labor market as they exist now. We also want to ensure that we are using state-of-the-art methodology to do so. That is what we’ll be talking about today.

Examples of changes to jobs and nature of work:

• The way people look for work and how companies hire workers has changed.

• The prevalence of informal work arrangements, “gig work,” and on-demand work has increased.

• Automation may affect the labor market outcomes for this cohort of individuals.

Example of changes to survey methods

• Using administrative records to replace or determine which survey questions a respondent is asked.

Past Content and Feedback for a new youth cohort — ~5 Mins

Ask group if they were able to review the handout ahead of time.

If consensus of group is that most did not review handout, briefly go over past content and feedback before proceeding to NLSY26 content section.

Feedback already received:

• Defining relationship of individual to employer (type of worker)

• Figuring out how the respondent is paid and how to convert to a wage when it isn’t a typical wage/salary arrangement

• Measuring gig and other short-duration work episodes

• Changing nature of work and automation

• Kinds of jobs kids take in context of family situation (recoup lost earnings of parents)

• Job search and internet/social media/connections

• Jobs and workplace characteristics (physical demands/workplace exposure/psychosocial stresses/discrimination)

• Collect more information on what people do on their jobs

NLSY26 Questionnaire Content — ~25 Mins

1. Content Questions

• How can the NLSY26 best provide value in understanding the changing nature of work?

• What are the background characteristics and early decisions that are important to collect in the early teen years for understanding labor market outcomes at older ages?

• What measures of early work are essential to capture during adolescents to enable study of school-to-work transitions?

• What are the important pre-cursors to employment and careers that can be captured in the NLSY26?

• Is it useful to capture information about early informal jobs before age 15?

• What content (if any) regarding employment and the nature of work needs to be kept the same for comparison to prior cohorts?

• What new concepts need to be added to the new NLSY cohort so that researchers can study the changing nature of work?

• For those who are familiar with the previous NLS surveys, what are some work-related topics or questions that are currently in the NLS survey and should NOT be included in the new cohort?

2. Core topics to bring up if they don’t arise during the discussion:

• Youth employment, Employment before age 15/16, Employment while in high school

• How might we understand the youth’s perceptions about the skills needed for jobs? And the youth’s interests and plans to acquire skills?

• Telework/Location of place of work

NLSY26 Sampling and Methodology— ~20 Mins

• What types of sampling and methodology should the new NLSY26 cohort consider when collecting information about employment and characteristics of work?

• Are there subgroups that should be oversampled to enable research about the nature of work and different types of jobs?

• At what ages should the NLSY26 begin asking about the nature and characteristics of jobs data? At what age should the survey collect detailed work-history data on employment? (14? 15? 16?)

• With what frequency should data be collected to understand the nature of work compared to the earlier NLSYs, where data were collected annually until about age 30 and biennially thereafter NLSY collections?

• What are some measurement challenges in characterizing jobs and the nature of work that the NLSY26 will need to consider?

• What new developments in understanding the nature of work should be incorporated into the NLSY26?

• Any other methodological concerns or new advances in the work environment, job characteristics and the nature of work (like automation) that the NLSY26 should be considering?

NLSY26 Data Linkage — ~10 Mins

Data NLSY has linked to in the past:

• National Death Index

American Community Survey

Data NLSY could potentially link to:

• Administrative Earnings Data – For example, state-level UI wage records on quarterly wages for employees covered by the UI system or national IRS tax return data. 

• Disability Data – Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI), or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) 

• Education Records – For example, National Student Clearinghouse for a nationwide source of college enrollment and degree data. 

• Thinking about the future of work, are any of these data sets more important than others to consider linking to the NLSY26?

  • Are there other employment datasets that we’re missing in this list?

  • Thinking about the changing nature of work, what information will not be contained in administrative data and would need to be collected from surveys such as the NLSY26?

NLSY26 Dissemination— ~5 Mins

• For studying employment, labor supply, wages, job characteristics, and the nature of work,

  • How useful is public-use data without detailed geographic information?

  • How useful is restricted-access data with state and county geographic identifiers that can be accessed with a streamlined application process?

  • How useful is highly restricted access to data that contain zip code and census tract geographic identifiers and that can be linked to administrative records (for example, in the context of a Census FSRDC)?

• For your own work? For work of others in your field?

NLSY26 Final thoughts or concerns— ~5 Mins

• Are there any final questions or concerns regarding the changing nature of work data collected in the new NLSY26 cohort?

Close out

MODERATOR:

• Conclusion and thanks

• Provide other info on other feedback resources (survey, informational materials, email, etc.)