<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Governments perform national, labor-intensive censuses on a regular schedule. Censuses represent many of the largest peacetime expansions and contractions in federal hiring. The predetermined occurrence and scale of the census offers an economic experiment in the effects of temporary government hiring. This paper describes the construction of a data series on census hiring in the United States since 1950 and also collects available data on census employment in England and Wales, Canada, Korea, and Japan. Regressing total employment changes on census hiring yields coefficients extremely close to 1, indicating that there is no spillover from census hiring to the rest of the economy. Using census hiring and occurrence as instruments for government hiring in the US, Canada, and Korea, I estimate the effect of federal hiring on overall employment. Different samples yield varying jobs multipliers, with point estimates varying from -0.01 to 1.48. Including Korean and Canadian data yields lower multipliers, while including pre-1990 US data yields higher multipliers. In no specification can I reject the hypothesis that the job multiplier equals 1. In all specifications, standard errors are large enough that I can reject neither Keynesian nor crowd-out effects.</p></abstract>

Governments perform national, labor-intensive censuses on a regular schedule. Censuses represent many of the largest peacetime expansions and contractions in federal hiring. The predetermined occurrence and scale of the census offers an economic experiment in the effects of temporary government hiring. This paper describes the construction of a data series on census hiring in the United States since 1950 and also collects available data on census employment in England and Wales, Canada, Korea, and Japan. Regressing total employment changes on census hiring yields coefficients extremely close to 1, indicating that there is no spillover from census hiring to the rest of the economy. Using census hiring and occurrence as instruments for government hiring in the US, Canada, and Korea, I estimate the effect of federal hiring on overall employment. Different samples yield varying jobs multipliers, with point estimates varying from -0.01 to 1.48. Including Korean and Canadian data yields lower multipliers, while including pre-1990 US data yields higher multipliers. In no specification can I reject the hypothesis that the job multiplier equals 1. In all specifications, standard errors are large enough that I can reject neither Keynesian nor crowd-out effects.

Does Census Hiring Stimulate Jobs Growth?

IZA Journal of Labor Policy

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

{"article-title":"Does Census Hiring Stimulate Jobs Growth?"}

Governments perform national, labor-intensive censuses on a regular schedule. Censuses represent many of the largest peacetime expansions and contractions in...

Does Census Hiring Stimulate Jobs Growth?

Published Online: Jul 11, 2020

Page range: -

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/izajolp-2020-0005

Keywords
census, government employment, fiscal policy

© 2020 Salim Furth, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Does Census Hiring Stimulate Jobs Growth?

Published Online: Jul 11, 2020

Page range: -

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/izajolp-2020-0005

Keywordscensus, government employment, fiscal policy

© 2020 Salim Furth, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Keywords
census, government employment, fiscal policy