TY - JOUR AU - Burda,Michael C. AU - Hamermesh,Daniel S. AU - Stewart,Jay TI - Cyclical Variation in Labor Hours and Productivity Using the ATUS JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 18603 PY - 2012 Y2 - December 2012 DO - 10.3386/w18603 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18603 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18603.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Michael Burda Faculty of Business and Economics Humboldt University Berlin Spandauer Str. 1 D-10178 Berlin Germany E-Mail: burda@wiwi.hu-berlin.de Daniel S. Hamermesh Department of Economics Barnard College 3009 Broadway New York, NY 10027 E-Mail: hamermes@eco.utexas.edu Jay Stewart Bureau of Labor Statistics 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NE Washington, DC 20212-0002 Tel: 202-691-7376 E-Mail: Stewart.Jay@bls.gov AB - We examine monthly variation in weekly work hours using data for 2003-10 from the Current Population Survey (CPS) on hours/worker, from the Current Employment Survey (CES) on hours/job, and from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) on both. The ATUS data minimize recall difficulties and constrain hours of work to accord with total available time. The ATUS hours/worker are less cyclical than the CPS series, but the hours/job are more cyclical than the CES series. We present alternative estimates of productivity based on ATUS data and find that it is more pro-cyclical than other productivity measures. ER -