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Survey of Business Owners
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The Survey of Business Owners (SBO) provides the only comprehensive, regularly collected source of information on selected economic and demographic characteristics for businesses and business owners by gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status. Data include the number of employer and nonemployer firms, sales and receipts, annual payroll, and employment. Data aggregates are presented by gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status for the United States by 2012 NAICS, states, metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, counties, places, and employment and receipts size.
Download supplemental documentation such as codebooks.
DownloadDetailed Methodology
The data are compiled by combining data collected from businesses and business owners in the SBO with data collected from the main economic census and administrative records.The SBO universe is stratified by state, industry, frame, and whether the company has paid employees. The Census Bureau selects large companies, including those operating in more than one state, with certainty. These companies are selected based on volume of sales, payroll, or number of paid employees. All certainty cases are sure to be selected and represent only themselves (i.e., have a selection probability of one and a sampling weight of one). The certainty cutoffs vary by sampling stratum, and each stratum is sampled at varying rates, depending on the number of firms in a particular industry in a particular state. The remaining universe is subjected to stratified systematic random sampling. For more information see https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/sbo/about.html
- Survey (self- or interviewer-administered)
- Every five years
- Last year/last 12 months
Data have been collected every 5 years since 1972, for years ending in "2" and "7" as part of the economic census. The program began as a special project for minority-owned businesses in 1969 and was incorporated into the economic census in 1972 along with the Survey of Women-Owned Businesses.
- Employer Identification Number (EIN)
- County FIPS code
- State FIPS code
- Other (see Linkage Capabilities description)
PIK is not listed in the linking variables because it is not reliable for identifying the business owner. . Census Place. ALPHA. FIRM_ID (Census Firm Identifier). NAICS. ENTERPRISE_ID (Business Register Enterprise ID)