Unleashing Economic Insights: Exploring the Value of the 2022 County Business Patterns by Industry

On June 27, 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2022 County Business Patterns (CBP), which provides subnational economic data by industry on an annual basis. This data includes valuable information such as the number of establishments, employment during the week of March 12, first quarter payroll, and annual payroll for nearly 1,000 industries defined by the 2017 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The data is available at various levels such as national, state, combined statistical area, metropolitan/micropolitan statistical area, county, congressional district, and ZIP Code.

The CBP also includes data for Puerto Rico and the Island Areas at the state and county-equivalent levels. This information is valuable for studying economic activity in small areas and can be used by federal agencies to assess employee concentrations and industry trends. Private businesses can use this data to conduct market analysis and measure the effectiveness of their sales and advertising programs. They can also use it to set sales quotas and develop budgets. State and local government offices rely on this data to evaluate business changes and develop fiscal policies that will benefit their communities in the long run.

The CBP data is sourced from the Business Register, a database maintained by the Census Bureau that contains information on all known single- and multi-establishment employer companies. This database mainly contains nonsurvey data such as tax return information. Data from CBP datasets from 1986 to the current reference year can be downloaded from various sources online while CBP tables from 2012 to the current reference year are available on www.data.census.gov/cgi-bin/ncspubs?file=CBP/CBPTableSearcher_v3&publication=CBPTABLES&year=YYYY&industrytype=ALL&geoentity=COUNTY&statecode=XXXX&countyname=COUNTYNAME