Nov 27 -- The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, invites public comment by January 26, 2024 regarding the proposed revised Current Population Survey (CPS) Disability Supplement.
The July 2024 CPS Disability Supplement will be conducted at the request of the Department of Labor's Chief Evaluation Office. The Disability Supplement will provide information on the labor force participation rates for people with disabilities and those experiencing work-limiting health conditions or difficulties; the health conditions or difficulties they face; barriers to employment; challenges that make it difficult to perform their jobs; and job-related accommodations.
Since the supplement was last collected in 2021, work patterns have changed, policies have changed, and assistive technologies have advanced. In the 2024 iteration of the Disability Supplement, a number of questions will be added and others will be dropped, and overall there is no additional burden on the respondents.
New questions are being added to identify individuals with health conditions or difficulties that limit their ability to work, to complement data collected by the six disability questions currently included in the basic CPS, which ask a series of yes or no questions about whether a person:
1. Is deaf or has serious difficulty hearing
2. Is blind or has serious difficulty seeing (even with the assistance of corrective lenses)
3. Has serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
4. Has serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs
5. Has difficulty dressing or bathing
6. Has difficulty doing errands alone
A number of questions are thus being added to the 2024 Supplement to identify individuals with a work-limiting health condition or difficulty and to classify or identify these conditions. Questions also will be asked to determine if work-limiting conditions or disabilities are temporary. The supplement will continue to include questions about barriers to employment and workplace accommodations. Questions about participation in specific assistance programs, the receipt of financial assistance, working from home, and others will be dropped to accommodate the new focus.
Because the Disability Supplement is part of the CPS, the same detailed demographic information collected in the CPS will be available about respondents to the supplement. Thus, comparisons will be possible across respondent characteristics, including sex, race, ethnicity, age, and educational attainment. It will also be possible to create estimates for those who are employed, unemployed, and not in the labor force. Because the CPS is a rich source of information on the employment status of the population, it will be possible to examine in detail the nature of various employment and unemployment situations. Additionally, questions about telework are now asked on the monthly CPS; they will enable analyses of how the incidence of telework and disability intersect.
2021 CPS Disability Supplement data release (March 2022):
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/dissup.htm
Census CPS Disability Supplement:
https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/time-series/demo/cps/cps-supp_cps-repwgt/cps-disability.html
Draft data collection instrument and technical documentation available at
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/5urh4ot6yc66l31p93s9e/h?rlkey=g23tm2u7ucf30oyqczcoro2xw&dl=0
FRN:
https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2023-26089