Firm Data
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Statistics of U.S. Businesses,
Business Dynamics Statistics, Business Employment Dynamics, and Nonemployer Statistics
| Introduction | SUSB | BDS | BED | Nonemployers |
Introduction
This website provides data and links to data on businesses with and without employees. These are referred to as “employer firms” and “nonemployer firms.” Employer firms have the lion’s share of receipts and payroll, while nonemployer firms are far more numerous.
Data on employers and associated business characteristics are available from the Statistics of U.S. Businesses (SUSB), Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS), and Business Employment Dynamics (BED) programs and data on nonemployers is available from the Nonemployer Statistics (NE) program. The programs are annual and from the U.S. Census Bureau, except the Business Employment Dynamics which is quarterly and from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. SUSB, NE and BED have detailed industry data while BDS is available at the major industry level. SUSB and NE are available at the county level while BDS and BED are available at the state level. BED is available with only about a 9 month lag while the other datasources are available with a lag of a few years. BED's timeliness does come at a cost in terms of accuracy of firm size compared to the other datasources. BDS is unique in that it has a firm age component. (Note that BDS data has not been updated since its inception, but it is planned to update the data in the future).
Detailed data on owner and business characteristics is available from the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Business Owners in years ending in 2 or 7 which is part of their Economic Census.
The PDF files present quick views on high level figures and are available in MS Excel files for ease of use. The tab delimited text files contain more data detail and can easily be copied and pasted into spreadsheet software (depending on the software, pasting as text instead of html will parse the data into cells).
Public and federal agencies
are encouraged to use the data for economic research and
regulatory analyses. The Office of Advocacy defines a
small business for research purposes as an independent
business having fewer than 500 employees however, the
SBA's Office
of Size Standards has industry definitions of small
businesses for government purposes.
Statistics of U.S. Businesses
The Office of Advocacy partially funds the U.S. Census Bureau to produce data on employer firm size in the SUSB program. In these data, a firm is defined as the aggregation of all establishments owned by a parent company (within a geographic location and/or industry) that have some annual payroll. A firm may be located in one or more places.
SUSB’s employer data contain
the number of firms, number of establishments, employment,
and annual payroll for employment size of firm categories
by location and industry. The employer data consist of static and dynamic data. Unless otherwise
noted, the data are static, that is, they are a "snapshot"
of firms at a point in time. Receipts by employment size
of firm are available for 1997 and 2002, and special tabulations
by receipt size of firm are available for the United States.
Industries are defined according to Standard
Industrial Classification for 1988 to 1998; and the
North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
thereafter.
NAICS uses two time periods
to identify U.S., industries. SUSB data for 1998 -2002
uses NAICS 1997; and SUSB data for 2003 and beyond use
NAICS 2002. The SUSB total falls short of the total number
of firms because it excludes farms, and businesses without
employees. (Because employment is measured in March, SUSB
does have a firm size category of zero for firms that
had no employees in March but had positive employment
at some point during the year.) Farm data are available from other sources.
In recent years, the U.S. Census Bureau has begun using noise infusion for disclosure avoidance. See the U.S. Census Bureau for a discussion on noise infusion. Note that this site does not differentiate between disclosure and noise infusion but data directly from Census' does have noise markers.
U.S. Data (Microsoft Excel file of data for the following PDF files plus historic data)
Classified by employment size of firm
Segmenting the economy into 25 size classes, 2007 (PDF file) 1992-2007 (TXT file)
Totals, 1988-2007 (PDF file)
Major industries, 1988-1998, 1998-2007 (PDF files)
All industries by NAICS codes, 2007 (PDF file) (See the Excel file for more size classes)
All industries, 1990-1998, 1998-2002, 2003-2007 (TXT files)
Legal form of organization by major industry, 2007
- U.S.
receipt size of firm by major industry group, 1997, 2002 & 2007 (PDF file)
- U.S. all industries data by receipt size, 1997, 2002, 2007 (TXT files)
- U.S.
annual payroll size of firm by major industry group, 2006 (PDF file)
Dynamic data, by births, deaths, growth, and decline
State, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) & County (Microsoft Excel file of PDF files plus historic data)
Classified by employment size of firm
- State totals, 1990,1995, 2000-2007 (PDF file) 1988-2007 (TXT File)
- State major industry data, 1988-1997, 1998-2002, 2003-2007 (TXT file)
- State detailed industry data, 1998-2007 (TXT file)
- MSA totals, 1995, 2000-2007 (PDF file)
- MSA major industry group data, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, Totals 1993-2007(TXT files)
- State MSA and Non-MSA totals, 1995-2007 (TXT file)
- Micropolitan Statistical Areas 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 (TXT file)
- Counties 2007 (TXT file)
- State
annual payroll size of firm, 2006 (PDF file)
Dynamic data, births, deaths, growth and decline
- State totals, 2005-2007 (PDF file)
- State MSA/ Non-MSA net changes, 2005-2007 (PDF file)
- MSA Births, Deaths and Employment, 2005-2007 (PDF file)
- State major industry
data 1989-1998, 1998-2007 (TXT files)
- State MSA and Non-MSA totals, 1995-2007 (TXT file)
- Metro and micropolitan statistical areas, 2003-2007 (TXT file)
- Counties (no size data available), 2005-2007 (TXT file)
Footnotes
- Annual payroll and receipts
are in thousands of dollars.
- A firm is defined as an
aggregation of all establishments owned by a parent
company (within a geographic location and/or industry)
with some annual payroll.
- Employment size categories
are based on the national employment size of the firm
in all industries. So if a firm has 20 employees in
a given industry or location and has 10,000 total employees,
the firm will be in the 500+ employee category for that
given industry or location.
- The text files are
tab delimited text files. You can open the text file with spreadsheet
software (files can be opened in database software but
footnotes may be deleted).
- Total_Code, 1 = industry
division total.
- E# represents data for
firms with # employees. For multiple year data, the
first two characters represent the year followed by
the employment size class.
- When disclosure is necessary
sometimes ranges are footnoted ([a]=0-19, [b]=20-99,
[c]=100-249, (D)=Disclosure, [e]=250-499, [f]=500-999,
[g]=1,000-2,499, [h]=2,500-4,999, [I]=5,000-9,999, [j]=10,000-24,999,
[k]=25,000-49,999, [l]=50,000-99,999, [m]=100,000+).
- Information about the process of producing Statistics
of U.S. Business (PDF file) is available.
Differences
Between Static and Dynamic Data
Static data indicate the
importance of firm size classes and the changing importance
of firm size classes over time. Dynamic data indicate
the growth of firm size classes over time. Unless indicated,
the tables above refer to static data. Dynamic data were
created using a longitudinal database from the U.S. Census
Bureau.
- Static firm size data
– These data report the number of firms, number of establishments,
employment, annual payroll, and estimated receipts by
employment size of firm. Firms are defined by their
employment size of firm at a point in time on a yearly
basis. Because firms can change employment size classes
from year to year, static firm size data cannot indicate
the performance of employment size classes. However,
comparisons of static firm size data can illustrate
the changing importance of small and large firms by
location (U.S., states, or MSAs), and/or industries.
- Dynamic firm size data
– These data report the number of and changes in establishments
and employment classified by beginning year employment
size of firm (firms remain in these categories for the
end-of-year figures). Changes are caused by the creation
of new firms (original establishments) or new establishments
of existing firms (secondary establishments), deaths
of original or secondary establishments, and expansion
or contraction of employment at existing establishments.
New firms are classified by their end-of-year firm size.
Dynamic data show the performance of firm employment
size categories.
- Dynamic and static figures
can differ because dynamic data exclude establishments
with zero employment. Dynamic data's end-of-year figures
in firm employment size categories will differ from
static data of the same year because dynamic data's
firms are defined by their beginning year employment
size of firm. Dynamic data track firms that change in
ownership or legal form during the year better than
static data.
Business Dynamics Statistics
BDS contains employer firm data by firm age. The underlying data has age of establishment and age of firm is determined by the firm's oldest establishment. This can cause an issue when a "newer" firm takes over older establishments, but in absence of conducting a census on firm age, methodology decisions like this must be made. See the background paper Business Formation and Dynamics by Business Age: Results from the New Business Dynamics Statistics by John Haltiwanger, Ron Jarmin and Javier Miranda for information on the data program.
This section should be viewed as an introduction to the data program, please visit the U.S. Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics program for background about the data and their database list for more detailed data on firm size, state and major industry (includes text files).
- Establishments by firm age, 1977-2005 (Microsoft Excel file)
- Employment by firm age, 1977-2005 (Microsoft Excel file)
- Establishments and employment by employment size of firm, 1977-2005 (Microsoft Excel file)
Business Employment Dynamics
BED contains employer firm data with a focus on employment changes from establishment entry, growth, decline and exit. Because the data is quarterly, some establishments can close and reopen during the year. Fortunately, BLS presents the data in two ways to capture the seasonal firms by listing establishment openings (did not exist in the previous quarter) and establishments births (did not exist in the previous year) and similar classifications for closings and deaths. See the background paper Measuring job and establishment flows with BLS longitudinal microdata by Timothy Pivetz, Michael Searson,
and James Spletzer for information on the data program. Recently, the data program added establishment age data.
This section should be viewed as an introduction to the data program, please visit the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' BED program for background about the data and for more detailed data.
- Quarterly establishment births, deaths and associated employment, mid-1992 - 2009
- State quarterly establishment births, deaths and associated employment, mid-1992 - 2009 (see Tables 9)
- Quarterly net job change by employment size of firm, mid-1992 - 2009 (totals do not match other figures as some firms do not have firm size identifiers)
- Employer firms by employment size of firm, 1993 - 2009
- Employment by employment size of firm, 1993 - 2009
- Establishment age and survival 1994 - 2009
Nonemployer
Statistics (Microsoft Excel file of PDF files)
A nonemployer firm is defined as one that has no paid employees, has annual business receipts of $1,000 or more ($1 or more in the construction industries), and is subject to federal income taxes. The Census Bureau provides nonemployer business data. According to Census, "Nonemployers account for roughly 3 percent of business activity [in terms of sales or receipts]. At the same time nonemployers account for nearly three-quarters of all businesses. Most nonemployer businesses are very small, and many are not the primary source of income for their owners." See the U.S. Census Bureau's Nonemployer Statistics for more detailed information and to have the data presented in html format. The nonemployer section also contains capital expenditure data for both employers and nonemployers. See the U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Capital Expenditures Survey for more details.
In recent years, the U.S. Census Bureau has begun using noise infusion for disclosure avoidance. See the U.S. Census Bureau for a discussion on noise infusion. Note that this site does not differentiate between disclosure and noise infusion but data directly from Census' does have noise markers.
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