by using detailed location and industry information available in both data sets to match worker records in the SDF to employer records in the SSEL. In this section we discuss the details of the matching process, assess the accuracy of the match, and discuss the representativeness of these matched data.The Matching ProcessHouseholds receiving the 1990 Decennial Census Long Form were asked to report the name and address of the employer in the previous week for each employed member of the household. In addition, respondents were asked for the name and a brief (one or two word) description of the type of business or industry of the most recent employer for all members of the household. Based on the responses to these questions the Census Bureau assigned geographic and industry codes to each record in the data and it is these codes that are available in the SDF. In addition to this information, the SDF contains the standard set of demographic characteristics collected on the long-form of the Decennial Census. To construct the NWECD we first selected records for the slightly more than 17 million respondents who indicated they were employed in the previous week. The SSEL is an annually updated list of all business establishments with one or more employees operating in the United States that the Census Bureau uses as a sampling frame for its various Economic Censuses and Surveys. As such, the SSEL contains the name and address of each establishment, geographic codes based on its location, and a four-digit SIC code. In addition, the SSEL contains data on the number of employees and total annual payroll for the establishment, a unique establishment identifier, as well as an identifier that allows the establishment to be linked to other establishments that are part of the same enterprise. To construct the NWECD, we selected the 5.6 million records from the 1990 SSEL. We focus on the private sector, excluding establishments in Public Administration...
