How can I benchmark the racial, ethnic and gender composition of my workforce against the external labor market?

The primary external benchmark for comparing the racial, ethnic and gender composition of an internal workforce and the analogous external labor market is the Special EEO File released by the US Census Bureau. In December 2003, the Bureau released the Census 2000 Special EEO File. It is the result of a reimbursable agreement with the US Census Bureau and a consortium of federal agencies consisting of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Department of Justice, Department of Labor and Office of Personnel Management. The basic file contains data similar to that in comparable files from the 1970, 1980 and 1990 censuses.

The primary variables on the Census 2000 Special EEO File are:

• race and ethnicity, with additional racial categories for Hawaii;

• sex;

• 472 detailed occupational categories (or 471 detailed occupational categories, when the unemployed with no work experience are not included);

• geography (including, in most instances, the United States, each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Metropolitan Statistical Areas, counties and places);

• educational attainment;

• age groups;

• earnings categories; and

• 88 industry groupings.

How do the industry and occupation classifications for Census 2000 compare to the ones used in the 1990 Census? The Census 2000 industry and occupation classifications are completely revised from the ones used in 1990. They are now based on the 1997 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and the 1998 Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) coding structures. The 1990 system was based on the 1987 Standard Industrial Classification Manual (SIC) and the 1980 Standard Occupational Classification Manual (SOC).

Why were the industry codes for Census 2000 changed from the SIC to the NAICS? The North American Industry Classification System was developed as a joint effort by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, in order to have common industry definitions. This enables economists and others to compare the industrial statistics produced in each of the three different nations' labor force. For more information on the NAICS, go to the website http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html . The Census Bureau always uses the most recent standard classification to create its own classification for each census. For this reason it has based the Census 2000 classification on the NAICS rather than on the SIC.

Where can I get more information? Information about the Census 2000 Special EEO File is available on the Internet from the Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov ) and the EEOC (http://www.eeoc.gov ). In addition, a new Census 2000 EEO data tool showing occupation information by where workers live or where they work is available on the Census Bureau's website.