Preliminary Micro Data Results from the Business List Comparison Project

• Activity Number: 542
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 10, 2006 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Business and Economics Statistics Section
• Author(s): Lucia Foster*+ and Joel Elvery and C. J. Krizan and David Talan
• Companies: U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics
• Keywords: business register ; business list ; micro data

Abstract

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Bureau of the Census (BOC) each hold separate business list files that are the foundation of some of the most important economic statistics in the United States. These business lists serve a number of critical functions including: creating sampling frames from which surveys and censuses are drawn, providing the data for BOC's County Business Patterns and BLS' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, and providing benchmarks for survey data. This paper extends the analysis of our earlier work comparing the lists at the aggregate (published) level by comparing the lists at the micro level. We compare industry and geographic classifications, number of establishments, payroll, and employment over the two lists. While there is some evidence of important differences, we find that the two lists exhibit a high degree of consistency.