The data on place of work were derived from answers to long-form questionnaire Item 22, which was asked of a sample of the population 15 years old and over. This question was asked of people who indicated in question 21 that they worked at some time during the reference week. (For more information, see "Reference Week.")
Data were tabulated for workers 16 years old and over; that is, members of the armed forces and civilians who were at work during the reference week. Data on place of work refer to the geographic location at which workers carried out their occupational activities during the reference week. The exact address (number and street name) of the place of work was asked, as well as the place (city, town, or post office); whether or not the place of work was inside or outside the limits of that city or town; and the county, state or foreign country, and ZIP Code. If the persons employer operated in more than one location, the exact address of the location or branch where the respondent worked was requested. When the number and street name were unknown, a description of the location, such as the building name or nearest street or intersection, was to be entered.
In areas where the workplace address was coded to the block level, people were tabulated as working inside or outside a specific place based on the location of that address, regardless of the response to Question 22c concerning city/town limits. In areas where it was impossible to code the workplace address to the block level, people were tabulated as working in a place if a place name was reported in Question 22b and the response to Question 22c was either "yes" or the item was left blank. In selected areas, census designated places (CDPs) may appear in the tabulations as places of work. The accuracy of place-of-work data for CDPs may be affected by the extent to which their census names were familiar to respondents, and by coding problems caused by similarities between the CDP name and the names of other geographic jurisdictions in the same vicinity.
Place-of-work data are given for minor civil divisions (MCDs) (generally, cities, towns, and townships) in 12 selected states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin), based on the responses to the place-of-work question. The MCDs in these 12 states also serve as general-purpose local governments that generally can perform the same governmental functions as incorporated places. The U.S. Census Bureau presents data for the MCDs in all data products in which it provides data for places. Many towns and townships are regarded locally as equivalent to a place, and therefore, were reported as the place of work. When a respondent reported a locality or incorporated place that formed a part of a township or town, the coding and tabulating procedure was designed to include the response in the total for the township or town.
The data on place of work relate to a reference week; that is, the calendar week preceding the date on which the respondents completed their questionnaires or were interviewed by enumerators. This week is not the same for all respondents because the enumeration was not completed in 1 week.
However, for the majority of people, the reference week for Census 2000 is the week ending with April 1, 2000. The lack of a uniform reference week means that the place-of-work data reported in Census 2000 do not exactly match the distribution of workplace locations observed or measured during an actual work week.
The place-of-work data are estimates of people 16 years old and over who were both employed and at work during the reference week (including people in the armed forces). People who did not work during the reference week but had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent due to illness, bad weather, industrial dispute, vacation, or other personal reasons are not included in the place-of-work data. Therefore, the data on place of work understate the total number of jobs or total employment in a geographic area during the reference week. It also should be noted that people who had irregular, casual, or unstructured jobs during the reference week may have erroneously reported themselves as not working.
The address where the individual worked most often during the reference week was recorded on the Census 2000 questionnaire. If a worker held two jobs, only data about the primary job (the one worked the greatest number of hours during the preceding week) was requested. People who regularly worked in several locations during the reference week were requested to give the address at which they began work each day. For cases in which daily work was not begun at a central place each day, the person was asked to provide as much information as possible to describe the area in which he or she worked most during the reference week.
The wording of the question on place of work was substantially the same in Census 2000, the 1990 census, and the 1980 census. However, data on place of work from Census 2000 and the 1990 census are based on the full census sample, while data from the 1980 census were based on only about one-half of the full sample.
For the 1980 census, nonresponse or incomplete responses to the place-of-work question were not allocated, resulting in the use of "not reported" categories in the 1980 publications. However, for Census 2000 and the 1990 census, when place of work was not reported or the response was incomplete, a work location was allocated to the person based on their means of transportation to work, travel time to work, industry, and location of residence and workplace of others. Census 2000 and 1990 census tabulations, therefore, do not contain a "not reported" category for the place-of-work data.
Comparisons between 1980, 1990, or Census 2000 data on the gross number of workers in particular commuting flows, or the total number of people working in an area, should be made with extreme caution. Any apparent increase in the magnitude of the gross numbers may be due solely to the fact that for Census 2000 and the 1990 census, the "not reported" cases have been distributed among specific place-of-work destinations, instead of tallied in a separate category, as in 1980.
