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Data sources / Federal statistics

Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses

Employer-business statistics presenting firms, establishments, employment and payroll by industry and enterprise size within published program definitions. Enterprise size and establishment size answer different research questions.

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Publisher
U.S. Census Bureau
Access
Free
Coverage
Employer-business statistics presenting firms, establishments, employment and payroll by industry and enterprise size within published program definitions. Enterprise size and establishment size answer different research questions.
Identifiers
NAICS code and vintage; Enterprise-size class; Reference year; Geography code
Freshness
Annual reference periods; inspect the release vintage.
Official URL
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/susb.html

What it can establish

Use Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses for a defined acquisition-research question. Match each record to the right entity using its identifiers (NAICS code and vintage, Enterprise-size class, Reference year) before accepting its contents, and keep U.S. Census Bureau's own scope and attribution on the finding.

  • The published distribution of covered business activity across enterprise-size categories for a specified reference period.
  • A structured basis for discussing employer-firm coverage when a market map needs a firm-oriented comparator.

What it cannot establish

  • A downloadable roster of named independent companies, their purchase availability, or ownership status.
  • Target revenue or acquisition suitability from the size category of an aggregate table, or the ownership structure of businesses within it.

A search that returns nothing in Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses describes the search performed. Coverage here is employer-business statistics presenting firms, establishments, employment and payroll by industry and enterprise size within published program definitions, so a missing record becomes a negative finding only where that coverage reaches the company in question and the evidence standard supports the inference. Otherwise the question stays open.

How Docket uses it

Your acquisition criteria become the agents' questions. Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses can support some of them and leave others unanswered; its freshness (annual reference periods; inspect the release vintage) is weighed answer by answer and it receives no blanket reliability score.

  • Triage. Separates the enterprise unit used in a table from the operating brands and locations on a target list.
  • Scout. Retains the relevant table, size definition and year when collecting contextual industry evidence.
  • Audit. Checks whether a coverage argument has mixed firm and establishment measures or incompatible reporting periods.

Scout records typed answers from a fixed list with verbatim quotations from retained pages. Audit reviews only the retained material, with every fetch tool denied. It settles supported contradictions, strikes unquotable answers and leaves gaps visible. See the research-agent method and screening criteria guide for the surrounding workflow.

Pitfalls and review questions

  • A small establishment can belong to a large enterprise. A location-based size screen can therefore disagree with an enterprise-based one.
  • Industry aggregation and disclosure limitations can conceal the particular niche under investigation. Preserve that uncertainty instead of presenting the table as an exact target universe.

Firms, establishments and size classes

Statistics of U.S. Businesses reports the number of firms and establishments, employment and annual payroll, by industry, geography and enterprise employment size. A firm here is the aggregate of all establishments under common ownership or control within a geographic area and industry, which is the concept that matters when you want to count companies in place of locations. Its methodology page defines these terms and explains how enterprise size is determined.

Size is measured at the enterprise level. A one-location business with ten employees and a ten-location business whose locations each have one employee are in different classes, which lets a researcher separate small independents from multi-site groups. The size classes are broad, so they bound but do not pin down the size of any particular company.

Limits

SUSB is released with a lag of roughly two years, so it describes the structure of an industry as it was, not as it is. It covers employer businesses and omits those without paid employees, which are reported in a separate series. Some cells are withheld to protect confidentiality, and as with other Census tables, readers should consult the documentation before combining figures.

It also contains no names. It tells you how many firms of a size exist, never which firms. Use it to size and to test coverage: compare the number of firms in a size class with the number of distinct firms in your target list. A big shortfall suggests missing coverage; an excess suggests duplicates or affiliates counted separately.

Illustration (fictional)

A researcher is asked whether a state contains enough independent pest-control companies to support a consolidation strategy. SUSB gives the number of firms in the relevant industry with 20 to 99 employees. The researcher compares it with the count of distinct firms in a licence-based list, finds the list holds about half as many, and reports that coverage of that size class is incomplete, with the specific gap stated.

Related sources

Federal statistics

Census County Business Patterns

A published establishment, employment or payroll measure for a defined geography, industry classification and reference year.

Federal statistics

Census Annual Business Survey

The survey's published estimate for a defined business or owner characteristic, together with the relevant population and reference period.

Federal statistics

BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages

Employment, wage and establishment measures for the specified covered population, industry, geography and period.

Relevant sector playbooks

Related reference pages and articles

Sources and further reading

These links identify research contexts to investigate, rather than conclusions about sector attractiveness. Ask how Census Statistics of U.S. Businesses would be used on your list or return to the complete source directory.

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