BusinessCounts is a
geographic summary database of business establishments, employment, and
occupation, The core BusinessCounts data, which now utilizes the
industry standard InfoUSA database as its primary source data, includes data
to the major SIC group with detailed establishment types. The database
is available at the block group level and higher, including all standard
geographic aggregations.
BusinessCounts is a vital
addition to residential demographic data, in that the success of many
business establishments is dependent upon not only the residential
population, but also the working population during the daytime.
Based primarily on the InfoUSA business database and supplemented by various
public data sources, BusinessCounts provides a clear look at the range and
size of establishments and their employees within any geographic area.
Content.
BusinessCounts
is a geographic summary database of business establishments and employees
for nearly ten million businesses and one hundred and thirty million
employees. The database is available for all standard levels of
geography including block group.
BusinessCounts is a geographic compilation of the InfoUSA business list,
supplemented by occupational data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and
the County Business Patterns program. The primary variables
available include:
- Total
Establishments, Employees,
- Size
Establishments by size
- Occupation
Employment by occupation
- Major Industry
Establishments, Employees
- NAICS -
Establishments, Employees by 3 and 4 digit
Methodology and
Data Sources
The core source for the InfoUSA Business Database
that is built from a careful integration of commercial databases,
compiled white and yellow page directory data, city directories,
corporate annual reports, and securities filings. The BusinessCounts
file is current to January 2007.
In years past, a different data source was used by
AGS to compile this database, and users should review the notes at the
end of this document that outline the type and scope of the impacts of
the change in source data. The primary changes that will be noted by
users include:
:
-
The ability to release establishment level data for use in mapping
applications, with selection based on company name, SIC, geographic
area, and company size
-
A greatly expanded number of establishments, many of which are small
and unclassified, but nevertheless reflect changes in the corporate
landscape
-
Improved SIC coding at establishments which include more than one
major industrial group
-
Reduced duplication of records – and subsequent over counting of
employment – at companies which contain multiple legal entities at the
same address
The database has been thoroughly cleansed for address
consistency and geocoded. Virtually all records within the
database are geocoded, although in some cases with less positional accuracy
than others.
SIC Classification
A significant number of
establishments are not SIC coded within business list files, most often
including those small firms for which neither private nor public records
exist. Many of these uncoded firms are simply individual holding
companies, DBA (“doing business as”) names, and new firms that have not yet
been well documented in multiple sources.
Employees
The file includes both a size classification (e.g. 1 to 4
employees) and in a significant number of records, verified employee counts.
When an actual employee count was given, this was used directly.
In order to estimate
employees for those establishments either only a size class range is
available, the latest County Business Patterns (CBP) database, published
annually by the Census Bureau was thoroughly analyzed. For each
four digit SIC code, the average number of employees per establishment of
each size class was computed in order to provide a base estimate.
These were further refined by using major industry average sizes by county,
since much of the county level detail is suppressed within the CBP in order
to avoid the possible disclosure of individual establishment employee,
payroll, and sales volumes.
Once the initial estimates
were applied, the results were evaluated on a county level basis in order to
ensure consistency with county totals for each major SIC group, and
nationally to ensure consistency with the detailed four digit SIC level.
It should be noted that the
employee size estimates for the Public Administration (SIC 91-98) major
group are not particularly accurate. Employee estimates
for individual government offices are simply not easily obtained and are
generally afforded less attention by the major business list providers than
private sector establishments. Further, neither the CBP not the
Economic Census databases cover this important sector of the economy.
The total employee estimate is therefore rather low for this sector as a
whole.
Occupation
The occupation estimates were created using the 1996 Industry Staffing
Patterns Estimate file, obtained from the Occupational Employment Statistics
(OES) Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The
occupational classification used by the OES was converted to the Census
Occupational categorization using a translation file obtained from the NOICC
Crosswalk and Data Center (NCDC), a technical resource center of the
National Occupational Information Coordinating Committee (NOICC).
Comparability to Other Sources
Several additional sources of national and state level
estimates from the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) and the Census Bureau
were used to verify summary counts in the final database. In
general, the database agrees substantially with these estimates.
The major sources of difference occur in several areas. These
areas of disagreement are noted below:
-
Manufacturing
employment in BusinessCounts is higher than corresponding statistics
from the BLS. In large part, this reflects the use of the “primary”
industry within BusinessCounts. Often, many manufacturing companies also
have wholesale trade and finance divisions. The employment within these
divisions is attributed to the main SIC category in this file, hence
manufacturing estimates are higher than in BLS sources.
-
Agricultural
establishments, specifically farms, tend to be underreported in the
database, so total agricultural establishment and employment counts are
low relative to other sources. The so-called “primary” sector is not
typically well represented in either the economic censuses or the annual
County Business Patterns files, and is subsequently difficult to
estimate with reliability.
-
Service employment in
the BusinessCounts file is higher than in equivalent BLS sources,
primarily as a result of classification issues. In official BLS reports,
educational institutions and employment is reported within the
appropriate level of government (e.g. state versus local) whereas in
BusinessCounts, these are reported in the educational services category.
In addition, many
public and quasi-public agencies are coded to the type of service they
provide rather than as public sector establishments. Public sector
estimates in BusinessCounts are therefore lower than published figures
by an amount roughly equivalent to the over-count in services. In
addition, the tendency within business list products such as InfoUSA is
to put more emphasis on private sector establishments than on public
sector establishments. Subsequently, in many cases not only is there no
actual employee count, but often no size class information as well.
Since the Census Bureau surveys of establishments typically exclude
public sector establishments, and what statistics are available are
typically only at a state level, the public sector employment estimates
are substantially underestimated and should not be relied upon for many
analytical applications.
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