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This issue of the Monthly Labor Review celebrates the 25th anniversary of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 Cohort (NLSY79). The National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) program, of which the NLSY79 is the flagship survey, is a bit of an anomaly among the Bureau of Labor Statistics many data collection efforts. None of the Bureau's key economic indicators relies on NLS data. Only a couple of the more than one hundred press releases the Bureau publishes each year involve data collected by the NLS program. It is doubtful that financial markets ever will react strongly to the release of NLS data. And unlike the current employment statistics, the inflation statistics, or the unemployment rate, measures from the NLSY79 are not likely to be discussed in everyday conversation or even in the business news.

Yet, the NLSY79 has been extremely influential. Over the last 25 years, it has provided the data for thousands of Ph.D. dissertations, working papers, journal articles, and books that have shaped theory and knowledge in disciplines such as economics, sociology, education, psychology, and health sciences. The survey's primary constituency includes hundreds of researchers within universities, think tanks, and government agencies both in the United States and abroad. Because of its quality, breadth, and thoroughness, the NLSY79 has become probably the most analyzed longitudinal data set in the social sciences. Almost every issue of leading labor economics and demography journals contain at least one article that uses NLSY79 data.