News from COPAFS

The quarterly meeting of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics (COPAFS) was held December 10, 2004. The following COPAFS officers were elected for 2005:

Chair:	Sarah Zapolsky (AARP)
Vice Chair:	Dick Kulka (Research Triangle Institute)
Secretary:	Ken Hodges (Population Association of America)
Treasurer:	Judie Mopsik (ABT Associates)
At large:	Maurine Haver (NABE)
	Ralph Rector (Heritage Foundation)
	Felice Levine (American Educational Research Association)
	Bob McGuckin (The Conference Board)

Dates for the 2005 COPAFS quarterly meetings are March 11, June 10, September 16, and December 9. Individual AUBER members are welcome to attend; however, please coordinate visits with either Paul Zelus or myself. Federal requirements regarding security clearances usually necessitate notification one week ahead of attendance. Meetings are held at the Bureau of Labor Statistics building, next to Union Station, in downtown Washington, D.C.

Topics covered at the December 10 meeting included current activities at the National Center for Education Statistics, updates from Capitol Hill, and estimates of the legal and unauthorized foreign-born population. One presentation of particular interest to AUBER members was the Census report on the new service sector economic indicators. The following is a summary from COPAFS of this presentation and the subsequent discussion.

Frederick Knickerbocker, U.S. Census Bureau, described that on September 13, the Census Bureau released the first data from the Quarterly Services Survey (QSS)-a new survey focused on the service sector. The release was greeted with enthusiasm and a question: What took you so long? The release was also met with allegations that its timing was influenced by the politics of the presidential election, but Knickerbocker asserted that nothing could be farther from the truth.

In fact, the Census Bureau had been working toward better services data throughout the 1980s and 1990s-collecting more service sector data in the Economic Census and in the Services Annual Survey (SAS). The funding and interagency planning process for the QSS dates back to 2001.

Implementation issues include the timing requirements of federal agencies and the question of what industries to cover as part of "services." The QSS currently covers NAICS sectors 51 (Information), 54 (Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services) and 56 (Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services). Data are collected from just under 5,000 firms (not establishments) with paid employees. The sample is drawn from the SAS, and does not include the self-employed. By law, quarterly surveys are voluntary, and response so far has been good-with weighted rates of slightly over 80% based on a mix of mail, Internet, telephone, and fax response modes.

To illustrate the importance of the service sector, Knickerbocker noted that the sectors in the QSS have annual revenues of $7.8 trillion, compared with $3.8 trillion for manufacturing. He explained that a Census Bureau definition of services (consisting of 12 private services-producing sectors in the Economic Census) accounts for about 55% of GDP. Adding wholesale and retail trade increases this to 70% of GDP, and including government services boosts it to 80%. The QSS reports sector totals, but does not provide a grand total because other sectors will likely be added. The Bureau does not want the press to mistakenly report "total services" numbers based on incomplete measures.

Looking ahead, Knickerbocker explained that the QSS is not yet seasonally adjusted, but that such adjustments will start after 16 quarters of data have been collected. They also plan to benchmark the QSS to the SAS, and will expand the QSS in 2005 to collect data on hospitals, nursing, and residential care facilities-increasing the sample size to about 6,000.

Knickerbocker described as "unfinished business" the fact that data on finance, insurance, real estate, transportation, and utilities are collected only once every five years. These industries need to be moved first into the SAS and then to the quarterly QSS. The long-term objective is to collect more data on products and activities across all service sectors.

During the follow-up discussion, it was noted that the controversy over the QSS release was fueled by the lack of advance work with nonfederal data users. There was also comment that this was not all the Census Bureau's fault; economists need to be better prepared to respond to the inevitable press inquiries related to the initial data release.

For more information on COPAFS activities, visit www.copafs.org.

Tom S. Witt
West Virginia University
AUBER representative to COPAFS

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