  We report results from the first comprehensive total quality evaluation of
five major indicators in the U.S. Census Bureau's Longitudinal
Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program Quarterly Workforce Indicators
(QWI): total flow-employment, beginning-of-quarter employment, full-quarter
employment, average monthly earnings of full-quarter employees, and total
quarterly payroll. Beginning-of-quarter employment is also the main tabulation
variable in the LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) workplace
reports as displayed in OnTheMap (OTM), including OnTheMap for Emergency
Management. We account for errors due to coverage; record-level non-response;
edit and imputation of item missing data; and statistical disclosure
limitation. The analysis reveals that the five publication variables under
study are estimated very accurately for tabulations involving at least 10 jobs.
Tabulations involving three to nine jobs are a transition zone, where cells may
be fit for use with caution. Tabulations involving one or two jobs, which are
generally suppressed on fitness-for-use criteria in the QWI and synthesized in
LODES, have substantial total variability but can still be used to estimate
statistics for untabulated aggregates as long as the job count in the aggregate
is more than 10.
