INSEE DADS: French matched employer-employee data (restricted access)

Restricted administrative microdata: not exercised here

DADS is confidential French administrative microdata (INSEE). It is not for sale and not publicly downloadable: it carries no provenance badge because there is no access path we can run here. Researchers reach it only through an approved project at the CASD (Centre d’acces securise aux donnees) secure data centre, with output subject to statistical-confidentiality review. The page documents what the collection is and the gotchas; treat it as unverified. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

DADS (Declarations Annuelles des Donnees Sociales) is the French administrative matched employer-employee dataset built from the annual social declarations that employers must file. It links workers to establishments with earnings, occupation (the detailed PCS occupation codes), hours, and contract information, covering essentially the universe of salaried employment. It is the French analog of the matched employer-employee panels used in labor and firm research. A paper we distill uses it: Beaumont, Hebert & Lyonnet use DADS for firm-level workforce composition by 4-digit occupation code (414 codes) to compute a human-capital distance between firms, alongside LIFI ownership links and firm tax files.

• Cost: not for sale. Restricted administrative microdata.
• Producer: INSEE (the French national statistical institute); access via CASD.
• Coverage: essentially the universe of salaried jobs in France over a long annual panel; establishment and worker identifiers allow matching across years.

Access (restricted)

• Through the CASD secure data centre. Approved researchers connect to CASD via a dedicated secure device (the SD-Box); the data never leaves the secure environment, and outputs are checked before release.
• Project approval required. Access requires an approved research project and the relevant French confidentiality authorization; it is granted per project, not as an open download.
• INSEE publishes documentation of the DADS variables and concepts, so the schema can be read even though the data cannot be pulled.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• Identifiers and their changes are the whole game. Worker (NIR-derived) and establishment (SIRET) identifiers are pseudonymized and can change across vintages and reforms; a naive year-over-year join loses spells. Use the official panel identifiers and watch identifier breaks.
• DADS has had major format changes. The collection moved through the DADS “postes,” DADS-U, and later DSN regimes; variable definitions and the unit of observation differ across these. Read the documentation for your exact years.
• Occupation codes are detailed but revised. The PCS occupation classification has versions; a 4-digit code is not stable across reclassifications. Pin the classification vintage when building occupation-based measures.
• Establishment, not firm. The base unit is the establishment (SIRET); rolling up to the firm (SIREN) requires the establishment-to-firm mapping and care with multi-establishment firms. Do not treat an establishment as a firm.
• Censoring and truncation in earnings. Earnings concepts and any top/bottom treatment follow the declaration rules; do not assume a clean uncensored wage.
• Output is disclosure-reviewed and cannot be redistributed. Results leave CASD only after confidentiality checks, and the microdata itself cannot be shared.

Citation

Cite the producer and access route, e.g.: DADS (INSEE), accessed via the CASD secure data centre under approved project, YYYY-MM-DD. State the years, the unit (establishment or firm), and the occupation-classification vintage.