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This documentation describes a date translation table that can be used to perform time-series aggregation and translation of other SSA publicly available datasets.  The table helps a user transform certain other SSA data files between SSA week, month and quarter, fiscal year, and calendar quarter and year.

A CSV dataset containing the translation table can be downloaded from:
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/disability/data/SSA_DATES1.csv

An XLSX version of the same translation can be downloaded from:
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/disability/data/SSA_DATES1.xlsx

SSA Time Period Descriptions

SSA counts its work in weekly increments as of the close of system processing each Friday.  A weekly interval is noted by its week ending date or by its fiscal week number. 

An SSA month may have either four or five weeks and normally ends on the last Friday of the month.  (There are some exceptions.)  When using or comparing monthly data there is a natural monthly variation depending upon the number of weeks in that particular SSA operating month.  This table provides the number of weeks in each SSA month for smoothing and comparison purposes.

An SSA quarter will always have 13 weeks (three SSA months) and normally ends on the last Friday of the last month of the quarter.  (There are some exceptions.) 

An SSA year usually has 52 weeks (12 SSA months, 4 SSA quarters) which coincide with the federal fiscal year, namely ending with the last Friday in September, and beginning the next SSA year/fiscal year with the following week.  (There are some exceptions.) 

The federal fiscal year begins with October 1 and ends the following September 30. 

Exceptions:  Exceptions occur in those SSA years where the calendrical fact of there being 52-1/3 weeks in a year and not just 52 weeks needs to be considered.  Since weeks are on the calendar only as whole weeks every so often a 53rd week must be considered, in the case of SSA for fiscal years 2005 and 2011.  In December of 2004 the last week in December was included in the month of January.  The December and March quarters both still had 13 weeks and 3 months each. In SSA year/fiscal year 2005 there were 53 weeks, and SSA did not include week 53 in any monthly or quarterly measure but did count week 53 in any SSA year/fiscal year measure.  The September and December quarters still had 13 weeks and 3 months each, exclusive of week 53.  Many offices deferred counting work in this week 53 until the first week of the next SSA year/fiscal year.  The same event will occur again in December of 2010 and September of 2011.  See in the data dictionary the fields Week Ending Date and SSA Month for additional information.

Table Usage

The table may be used to convert between SSA and calendar units of measure, or to aggregate and compare units of time of different length, or some combination of the two.

Weekly data can be sought by searching in the table with a week ending date or formatted date, or with a combination of fiscal year and fiscal week number.

Monthly or quarterly data might be provided in a variety of formats.  One common SSA format is identified by the Friday date of the last week in the month, quarter or fiscal year, which can be looked up in week ending date or formatted date.  If you are looking up a date presented to you with a format other than a full date with a month, day and year you need to determine whether the date you are using is an SSA or calendar date, and then search for that date in the proper SSA or calendar date column.

A full description of all fields is provided in the data dictionary below.

Technical Documentation

This dataset is provided in both CSV and XLS formats.  Data is physically provided in ascending Week Ending Date order.  Only one record or row is present for any Week Ending Date.  Dates in the table start with 10/6/2000 and end 9/25/2015.  File Name, File Version, and Update Date are the same for all rows for production, documentation, traceability and usability reasons.

CSV File Characteristics:  This table is available as a comma separated variable (CSV) file using ASCII characters with each line terminated with a carriage return + line feed combination (hex 0d, hex 0a).  Fields are separated from each other by a comma, characters are not quoted, spaces are suppressed, no signs are used for numbers.  Dates in  mm/dd/yyyy format have leading zeros suppressed from sub-components mm and dd.  Header information is the first row rather than data.

XLS File Characteristics:  This table is also available as a spreadsheet in XLS format.  Underlined text in the spreadsheet are active hyperlinks to obtain help or additional information located via bookmarks within http://www.socialsecurity.gov/disability/data/ssa-dates1.htm.  Row 1 contains hyperlinks to an explanation for every individual column in the spreadsheet.  The XLS file can be used without an active Internet connection, but help via the hyperlinks would then not be available.  The XLS file is compatible with any application program which can process Microsoft Excel 5.0/95 or later data.  Data types are “general” except for dates in m/d/yyyy format are of type “date” (columns C and D). The spreadsheet employs the following features:  some cells contain hyperlinks to other Internet locations at www.socialsecurity.gov; and Row 1 containing headers is frozen at the top of the screen display.

Data Dictionary

Field A:  File Name, alphabetic.  Contains the name of the file (including the extension) from which this row came, and is the same for every row in the dataset.

Field B:  File Version, unsigned numeric.  Identifies the version of the file in which this row was found.  Field B currently has a value of 1.  File Version will be the same for every row in the dataset.  The version number is incremented whenever a definitional change occurs to the dataset.  The Change History will identify the differences between file versions.

Field C:  Update Date, in mm/dd/yyyy format.  Indicates the date the data in the file was produced, whether for update or correction purposes.  Lead zeros for mm and dd are suppressed.  This date will be the same for every row in the dataset.

Field D:  Week Ending Date, in mm/dd/yyyy format.  (The same version of this date in yyyy-mm-dd format is available in Field E.)  Lead zeros for mm and dd are suppressed.  Social Security workload measurement weeks end at close of systems processing each Friday.  SSA workload measurement months end the last Friday of the month.  Every Friday from October, 2000, through September, 2015, appears and is associated with an SSA month and quarter, a fiscal week, month, quarter and year, and a calendar quarter and year.  The translations are straightforward from one time series to another except for fiscal years 2005 and 2011 which have 53 weeks rather than 52 (See the earlier general discussion on exceptions). The specific exceptions are:  (1) since the last Friday in December, 2004 (12/31/2005), is assigned to SSA month 01/2005, the Friday date associated with the SSA month and quarter of December, 2004, is 12/24/2004; and (2) since the last Friday in September, 2005 (9/30/2005), is the 53rd week in the year it is not assigned to any month on quarter, with the Friday associated with the SSA month and quarter of September, 2005, being 9/23/2005; and (3) since the last Friday in December, 2010 (12/31/2010), is assigned to SSA month 01/2011, the Friday date associated with the SSA month and quarter of December, 2010, is 12/24/2010; and (4) since the last Friday in September, 2011 (9/30/2011), is the 53rd week in the year it is not assigned to any month on quarter, with the Friday associated with the SSA month and quarter of September, 2011, being 9/23/2005.

Field E:  Formatted Date, yyyy-mm-dd formatted date in ANSI/ISO 8601 format corresponding to Week Ending Date, Field D.  Leading zeros are not removed from any date component.

Field F:  SSA Month, yyyy-mm formatted month in ANSI/ISO 8601 format corresponding to the SSA month represented by the date in Week Ending Date, Field D.  Leading zeros are not removed from any date component.  The month is normally the same month in the date in Week Ending Date, Field D, or Formatted Date, Week E, except that the week ending 12/31/2004 is in SSA month 2005-01, and the week ending 12/31/2010 is in SSA month 2011-01.  See exceptions and Field D for further explanation.  SSA Month will be blank for fiscal week 53, occurring for the weeks ending 9/30/2005 and 9/30/2011.

Field G:  SSA Weeks in Month, unsigned numeric.  Since there are 13 weeks in each quarter and SSA workload measurement weeks always end on a Friday, two SSA months each quarter will have 4 weeks and one SSA month will have 5 weeks.  This column provides the number of weeks in the SSA months identified in Fields D, E and F.  You would use the number of weeks in a month to assist in certain circumstances to more accurately compare months.  SSA Weeks in Month will be blank for fiscal week 53, occurring for the weeks ending 9/30/2005 and 9/30/2011.  See exceptions and Field D for a discussion of the manipulation of time series to accommodate 53 weeks, which might cause you to alter the “weeks in month” for 12/2004, 9/2005, 12/2010 or 9/2010 depending upon your requirements. 

Field H:  SSA Quarter Date, yyyy-mm formatted quarter in ANSI/ISO 8601 format corresponding to the SSA month identified in Field F.  mm will always be the last month of a quarter.  Leading zeros are not removed from any date component.  SSA Quarter Date usually also corresponds to the month shown in Week Ending Date, Field D, and Formatted Date, Field E, except for 12/31/2004 and 12/31/2010 which are both counted in the following January.  See exceptions and Field D for additional information. SSA Quarter Date will be blank for fiscal week 53, occurring for the weeks ending 9/30/2005 and 9/30/2011.

Field I:  Fiscal Year, in yyyy format.  This column identifies the SSA year/federal fiscal year associated with the dates identified in Fields D, E, F and H.

Field J:  Fiscal Quarter Number, in yyyy-q format.   yyyy will have the same value as Field F.  q is the ordinal fiscal quarter number associated with the SSA month identified in Fields F, and will have a value of 1 through 4.   The months of October through December will be quarter 1, January through March quarter 2, April through June quarter 3, and July through September quarter 4.  SSA Quarter Number usually also corresponds to the month shown in Week Ending Date, Field D, and Formatted Date, Field E, except for 12/31/2004 and 12/31/2010, which are counted in the following quarter.  See exceptions and Field D for additional information.  Fiscal Quarter Number will be blank for fiscal week 53, occurring for the weeks ending 9/30/2005 and 9/30/2011.

Field K:  Fiscal Week, in ww format from 01 through 53.  The leading zero is not suppressed.  Week 01 is the week ending the first Friday in October, the start of the fiscal year.  All years had 52 SSA weeks except for fiscal year 2005 and 2011 which each had 53 weeks.  See the prior discussion on exceptions for additional information.  Week 53 is not included in an SSA month or quarter, but is included in the fiscal year.  For week 53 SSA Month, SSA Weeks in Month, SSA Quarter Date and Fiscal Quarter Number will all be blank since week 53 is not considered a part of any SSA time series except SSA/fiscal week and SSA/fiscal year.

Field L:  Calendar Year, in yyyy format.  yyyy will have the same value as the year in Fields D and E.  Calendar Year will usually but not always correspond to the year in Fields F and H since the last calendar week in 2004 and 2010 are assigned to the subsequent SSA month ad quarter in the following year as part of the accommodation of there being 52-1/3 weeks in a year and not always an even 52.  See exceptions and Field D for additional information. 

Field M:  Calendar Quarter Number, in yyyy-q format.  yyyy will have the same value as the year in any calendar date in the same row.  q is the ordinal calendar quarter number associated with the calendar month identified in Fields D and E, and will have a value of 1 through 4.   The months of January through March will be quarter 1, April through June quarter 2, July through September quarter 3, and October through December quarter 4. 

Field N:  Calendar Quarter Date, in yyyy-mm formatted month in ANSI/ISO 8601 format corresponding to the calendar month represented by the date in Fields D and E.  Leading zeros are not removed from any date component. 

Field O:  Notes, text notes for certain weeks not conforming to an expected pattern.

Change History:

This change history does not reflect the date the dataset was last updated, and may not reflect changes to the documentation that are of an insubstantial nature.
6/1/2010:  Initial release of SSA-DATES1, file version 1.