1. Nebraska Enhanced Wage Records
Nebraska’s Experience so Far or Be Careful What You Ask For !?#%

2. Background History of using administrative records
Motor Vehicles & Wage Record matches
College graduate outcomes
Push for job titles to be added to wage records
Workforce Data Quality Initiative (WDQI) grant
Development of data warehouse
Expansion of internal data
Additional external data
Renewed push for expanded wage records
Nebraska has been enhancing our wage records for over 10 years with DMV data. We have used the DMV data to develop industry profiles and workforce profiles.
We have used a process for several years in creating postsecondary graduate out comes
LMI has been pushing adding an hours paid or worked with or without occupation titles for many years
WDQI
Nebraska received a round 2 and round 4 WDQI grant which was used to develop a data warehouse that can interface with Education’s longitudinal database’
A big part of this development was to bring in more than just Wage records, we added Benefit data and E & T data which is Wagner Peyser and WIOA.
Education’s system is only K – 12 at this point so we developed data sharing agreements
We also developed agreements with Corrections, Veterans, Apprenticeships
All of this activity helped keep the occupations and hours in discussions

3. Barriers to Wage Record Expansion
Cost
Internal pressure (no desire, inflexible systems, etc.)
Employer burden (real or imagined)
Not UI related
Common themes that we all hear.

4. New Fields – Research & Discussion
Workforce Information Council (WIC/WIAC)
Administrative Wage Record Enhancement Study Group report
Review of other states
Unemployment Insurance related
Focus on unmet data needs (hours worked, pay rates, staffing)
Discussion of additional fields needed
Items that are helping to bring the discussion for the need to add some items to the wage records.
Important to remember that UI has mandates that they have to follow for using UI funding on the wage record file.
Try to keep focus on a couple of items and show what you could provide if you had those data elements – Turn negative can’t do to could do if
UI’s focus is not on what additional types of information they can provide with their data, it is on collecting money and paying it out. What could help them do that better?

5. Tipping point Data-friendly administration Unmet data needs
Incentive program review (full- & part-time, pay at incentivized companies)
Short-time compensation program
Graduates and other education data linkages
Timing (other file & system changes being done)
The previous Commissioner had started pushing UI to add hours and occupations to the wage records
New Commissioner was the Agency Legal Council and had been in on previous discussions.
Perfect Storm;
Both Commissioners I think got tired of hearing me explain why we could not provide certain data because of the limitations of the wage records in hours and occupations
Legislative Audit Office was mandated to do audits of bills that incentivized business to grow and/or locate in Nebraska with tax credits. State Revenue could not provide much data due to their confidentiality laws so wage records became the fall back and LMI was assigned to assist in the audit. Difficult to prove if the jobs were high paying with out hours and if they were quality jobs without occupations.
The Incentive bill is due to sunset in a couple of years and so new legislation was being developed and LMI was brought the table because of our work on the audit. So Labor provided a process where employers could get a UI sub-account number and report their new employees under this and include hours paid and occupation title quarterly on the wage records to meet one of the requirements for the incentives. New Commissioner informed UI they would be adding it and set a data for the fields to be active so if the legislation passed the Wage Records would be ready.

6. Data Elements Added
Fields added in the “filler” space of fixed width file layout
Optional new fields
Hours Paid
Job Title
Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) this not seen on UI entry screen Internal use only
Data systems clearly label new fields as voluntary
Required in certain instances (participation in tax incentive programs, short-time compensation plan)
Wage Record file we were able to use the filler space to add the additional fields
One requirement by the Commissioner was that the columns be clearly labeled as voluntary. This way if you are a business that would be required to complete this field they would be informed to use the two optional columns - we don’t expect the employer to add the SOC just the job title
We also had another piece of legislation that could require the use of these fields it was for businesses that need to temporarily cut back on staff due to economy, Employers and keep employees on reduced hours and employees can draw UI for non-work hours.

7. Nebraska’s Wage Records
Mainframe system (New tax system planned start date 2019)
Fixed-width file format
“Filler” space within the file
Majority paid online
Electronic loads
Bulk filed (payroll providers)
UI Connect
A little over 90% of the employers are collected through online system.
We were able to use the filler space to add the new fields

8. Reported Data – 1st Quarter 2018
Job Titles (total)
5,119 Employers
81,839 Employees
Hours Paid (total)
2,344 Employers
80,661 Employees
Both Job titles & Hours
1,658 Employers
41,454 Employees
Job Titles
3,461
Employers
40,385
Employees
Both
1,658
Employers
41,454 Employees
Hours Paid
686
Employers
39,207
Employees
The employer count is the number of firms in and number of jobs
Nebraska started collecting hours paid and occupations in 1st QTR We are slowly adding new employers each quarter. We do not market this nor at this time do we have any legislation/rules that requires any group of employers to submit this data.
It is interesting to see how the data is reported. Here you can see that some employers are reporting just job titles or hours paid and both. I would have thought the number of employers would be higher for hours than occupations.
So if we want to look at job titles we find over 5,000 employers providing them and if we look at hours paid we have over 2,000 employers reporting
Disclaimers:
The system defaults to “0” hours paid, so the only way to look is for records greater than 0. It could be possible that some wages are actually for zero hours paid (back pay, settlements, commissions, or other situations)
This is only rows that contain the data. An employer could have reported one employee’s job title or hours and be counted in the above numbers, but might actually have many more employees that were not included.
59,885 employer, 1,101,885 Jobs

9. Projects Reviewing the data to understand the issues with it
Create an Enhanced Wage Record File that includes DMV, hours paid, and occupations.
Compare Graduate data to Wage Record file to compare CIP to SOC job
Develop processes for handling the data
Compare OES businesses to Wage Record respondents
We need to develop a process for coding the occupations and then getting that data loaded back to the Wage records or at least to the wage record longitudinal database in our warehouse.
Continue to track OES respondent and non-respondent data against data obtained in the wage record file

10. Recommendations Identify some specific uses for the added data
What would the addition of Hours allow you to do
What would the addition of Occupations allow you to do
Identify Customers that would use the data/information
Why would it help them?
Have a rough plan for how you will handle the data if these fields are added
Don’t expect UI to deal with the data, it is not their responsibility
If you are looking at adding or starting the discussion here are some thoughts: .

11. Recommendations*
Plan for and add extra fields all at once (even if they are still just a block of filler text for now)
One-time burden for employers to edit reports instead of multiple changes
Once the word is on the street you are collecting this data you will get questions
Be open to doing it on a voluntary basis

12. Nebraska Department of Labor – Office of Labor Market Information
More Labor Market Information visit our Web Site
Neworks.Nebraska.gov
Click
Labor Market Analysis
Presented by:
Phillip A. Baker
Phone
May 22, 2018