11 code 131 small wages without employment check macro edit version
Small Wages without Employment Check - Code 131 - Macro Edit Version
This edit runs a parallel course to the micro wages-without-employment edit that was just described, but uses macro data applied to a scaled-up tolerance. The formulation for this edit is shown below:
In which PK007 is the establishment-level maximum total wage value to allow zero employment, “ENZRU” is the Editing Non-Zero Reporting Units count, showing half the number of establishments that have non-zero total wages in the processed quarter (obviously, this is the only field that could increment the ENZRU for these accounts, since all employment months are zero). This is used to give a fair trial to the macro-level data using the same rules as those applied to the micro records, while ignoring the units that have everything set to zero, and thus don’t make a difference in the overall edit. It is completely appropriate to scale the tolerance in this manner, since adding in the “zero” units would allow the wages to get incredibly high while the employment remained zero. On the other hand, if the tolerance were not scaled to the number of non-zero units, it would present such a low wage limit that a macro cell with a dozen worksites of the same multi-unit family, having inestimable employment, could be flagged at the macro level even when the worksites have escaped with lower total wages.
The larger a macro cell is in terms of contributing micro units comprising the aggregate, the less likely it is for this edit to be flagged. Besides the fact that just one employee showing up for one of the employers in only one of the three months would blow the zero-employment scenario, it also becomes increasingly difficult for the summed total wages to continue reaching the required editing limit as it is scaled ever higher when multiplied by the non-zero unit count. It is also true however, that any macro cell flagged by this edit should appear in the integrated edit with all contributing micro records. The scaling of the tolerance makes it impossible for the macro-level data to fail the edit without revealing the micro records that contributed to the “infraction” at the scaled-down parameter level. It is similar to saying that four coins totaling a value of over 40¢ means that at least one of the coins must have a value larger than a dime. There is no way that a collection of four coins that are selected from dimes, nickels and pennies could have a value greater than 40¢. In the same manner, the scaling of the total wage limit gives no recourse but the conclusion that one or more of the micro records have the same condition present.
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