Improving the Accuracy of Economic Measurement with Multiple Data Sources: The Case of Payroll Employment Data

All authors are at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. We thank ADP for access to and help with the payroll microdata that underlie the work described by this paper. In particular, this work would not have been possible without the support of Jan Siegmund, Ahu Yildirmaz, and Sinem Buber. We are grateful for discussions with Katharine Abraham, Bora\u{g}an Aruoba, Simon Freyaldenhoven, Erik Hurst, Gray Kimbrough, Alan Krueger, Norman Morin, Matthew Shapiro, John Stevens, David Wilcox, Mark Zandi, and seminar participants at the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, ESCoE Conference on Economic Measurement, BLS, NBER CRIW meetings, the Bank of England, and the 2018 ASSA meetings. The analysis and conclusions set forth here are those of the authors and do not indicate concurrence by other members of the research staff or the Board of Governors. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.