Measuring labor market activity today: are the words work and job too limiting for surveys?

The Current Population Survey (CPS) produces some of the nation's most closely watched labor market statistics, including the national unemployment rate. However, some researchers have recently suggested that the labor force questions used in the CPS do not correctly capture workers in informal employment arrangements, causing an undercount in employment. Although we cannot directly measure how many workers might be missed in the CPS, we use data on income-generating activities from the American Time Use Survey to explore possible misclassification of employment in the CPS.