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Bureau of Labor Statistics > Consumer Expenditure Survey > Data > Public Use Microdata

Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) Public Use Microdata Home

The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) collects data on expenditures, income, and demographics in the United States. The public use microdata (PUMD) files provide this information for individual respondents without any information that could identify respondents. PUMD files include adjustments for information that is missing because respondents were unwilling or unable to provide it. The files also have been adjusted to reduce the likelihood of identifying respondents, either directly or through inference.

This format allows researchers to analyze expenditures, income, and demographic trends beyond what the published tables show. However, users of the PUMD files should have a strong background with statistical software. To learn more, you may want to explore the PUMD methodology with the CE PUMD Getting Started Guide and check the availability of data with the Dictionary for Interview and Diary Surveys (XLSX).

Experimental State Weights for 2019, supporting state-level analysis for selected states, are also available with their documentation.

To be notified when new datasets become available, please sign up for the CEX e-mail updates. If you have comments, suggestions, and questions about this page and its contents, please contact us.

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Public Use Microdata Annual Users' Workshop provides users the opportunity to learn how to use the PUMD and to present how they used PUMD in their research.

Last Modified Date: June 10, 2022