The development and use of industry data by the Social Security Administration

Over the past few years the Social Security Bulletin has published a series of technical articles that describe various Social Security Administration (SSA) data files. This article provides an overview of SSA's industry-related data files and statistical systems from both a current and a historical perspective. The author begins by explaining how SSA first collected business data from employers (starting in 1937) as a by-product of the requirement that employers report employee wages for benefit computation purposes. She describes the administrative methods by which the data are collected, SSA's coordination of its activities with other agencies, the data collection forms used, the scheme by which the data are coded, and the employer files into which the data are classified. In her closing, the author provides examples of the various uses of the industry data and the ways that these data relate to SSA's statistical program needs and to those of other agencies as well.