Removing workers’ compensation costs from the National Compensation Survey

Abstract

This article focuses on workers’ compensation (WC), one of 18 employer-provided benefits for which information is collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) under the National Compensation Survey (NCS) program. The response rate for this legally required benefit is quite low both in absolute terms and relative to that for the other NCS benefits. The NCS is hindered in its ability to raise the response rate for workers’ compensation, given that such an effort could potentially lead to lower response rates for other benefits, which make up a larger share of total compensation. Other proposals to improve the quality of the collected data or to find alternative sources of data have limitations as well. As a result, BLS has decided that the best path forward is to work with the Office of Management and Budget to remove WC data from the NCS. This article explores the impact that a cessation of collection of workers’ compensation would have on NCS products.