NLSY97 Data – In NLSY97 I See Weeks Marked “employed” But No Job Record Has Anyone Else Run Into This?

Hi all,

I’m working with NLSY97 and ran into something that’s confusing me. I’ve built employment status spells (based on weekly employment status) and job spells (based on start/end dates and employer IDs), and then merged them to see how things line up.

Most of it looks great. The job spells and employment spells match up really well. But in a few places a person is marked as “employed” for a week, but there’s no corresponding job record. ( from 3 days up to 2-3 weeks) No start date, no end date, no employer ID.

Is this normal in NLSY97? Could it have something to do with how the interviews were conducted, like status being carried over between interviews, or data being lagged?

I’ve checked my code and raw event files, and it doesn’t seem like I’m dropping rows or mismatching things. The issue only shows up occasionally, which makes me wonder if it’s just part of how the data is structured rather than an error on my end.

If anyone has seen this or knows how to handle it, I’d really appreciate your thoughts. I’m happy to share code snippets if that helps.

Thanks so much in advance!