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Reconciling Survey and Administrative Measures of Self-Employment

Katharine G. Abraham¹; John Haltiwanger²; Claire Hou³; Kristin Sandusky³; James R. Spletzer³

¹ National Bureau of Economic Research · ² University of Maryland and NBER · ³ United States Census Bureau

Good information on self-employment is needed to inform the ongoing discussion of the rise of the gig economy and its implications for workers. Tax data show significant growth in self-employment not captured in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS-ASEC). The growing gap reflects both self-employment in tax data missing from the CPS-ASEC and self-employment misreported as wage and salary work. We document consistent patterns in the discrepancies between the tax and survey data but are able to explain only a modest share of the growing disagreement between them.

DOI

10.1086/712187

Volume

39 (4)

Pages

825-860

Language

en

Export

BibTeX

Sources

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