Annual Business Survey

The Annual Business Survey (ABS) provides information on selected economic and demographic characteristics for businesses and business owners by sex, ethnicity, race, and veteran status. Further, the survey measures research and development (for microbusinesses), new business topics such as innovation and technology, as well as other business characteristics. The ABS is conducted jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics within the National Science Foundation. The ABS collects the following information from employer businesses: --Owner characteristics, including the gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status of the principal owner(s) from all firms in the sample; --Various business characteristics, including financing, from all firms in the sample; --Research and development activity and costs from firms with less than 10 employees; and --Innovation practices from all firms in the sample. Additional owner topics include military service, owner acquisition, job functions, number of hours worked, primary income, prior business ownership, age of owner, education and field of degree, citizenship and place of birth, and reason for owning the business. Other business topics include number of owners and percent ownership, family owned and operated, business aspirations, funding sources, profitability, types of customers, and types of workers.

Finally, the ABS includes R&D topics such as total R&D expenditures by field of research, source of funding, type of cost, and R&D personnel counts from a sample of nonprofit organizations in the Nonprofit Research Activities module.