July 29, 2005

Business "Births," Deaths," "Expansions" Tracked

A new Census Bureau web site tracks business births, deaths, and expansions from one year to the next. The Statistics of U.S. Business uses the Business Information Tracking Series (BITS) to link establishments from year to year. Using this file, we are able to tabulate data for establishment births and deaths and employment expansions and contractions. In 2001, for example, there were 10,789 logging establishments; by 2002 the number had dropped by 815. In that year, births numbered 1,013; deaths, 1,828. Employment saw a 6 percent drop from 2001 to 2002. You can find similar information for industries (4-digit NAICS level) for states and metro areas.

The data were created from the annual County Business Patterns files and developed with the Small Business Administration (SBA), which helped to fund the project. At present we have data for states and metropolitan areas for years between 1997 to 2002. In addition, for 1997 and 2002, you can get receipts data. For a complete time series of U.S. totals and downloadable files in text format, go to the SBA site. To access from the Census Bureau site, come to the top of the home page and select "Business." On the business overview page, look for "Statistics of U.S. Business."

[PDF] or denotes a file in Adobe’s Portable Document Format. To view the file, you will need the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader available free from Adobe.