Unleashing Economic Insights: The Release of the 2024 County Business Patterns Data by the U.S. Census Bureau

The U.S. Census Bureau has announced the release of its annual collection of data on the County Business Patterns (CBP) for 2024. This comprehensive resource provides economic statistics at a subnational level, organized by industry, and includes information such as the number of establishments, employment figures, payroll for the first quarter, and annual payroll for nearly 1,000 industries based on the 2017 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).

The data is available at different levels including national, state, combined statistical area, metropolitan/micropolitan statistical area, county, congressional district, and ZIP Code. It also provides information for Puerto Rico and the Island Areas at the state and county-equivalent levels. This makes it a valuable tool for economic analysis.

The CBP data is sourced from the Business Register database maintained by the Census Bureau containing information from both single and multi-establishment employer companies. The data is typically non-survey data often sourced from tax returns. The datasets from 1986 to the current year are available for download while tables from 2012 onwards can be accessed through data.census.gov.

Users of this data range from federal agencies to private businesses and state and local government offices. Federal agencies use it to track employee trends and concentrations by industry while private businesses analyze market potential, evaluate sales and advertising strategies and set sales targets based on this information. State and local government offices use it to assess business changes develop fiscal policies plan future initiatives.