Annual & Quarterly Services

Service Annual Survey Methodology

A mail-out/mail-back and electronic reporting survey of approximately 72,000 selected service businesses with paid employees; supplemented by administrative records data or imputed values to account for non-employer and certain other businesses. To be eligible for the list sample, service businesses must be in the Standard Statistical Establishment List, which contains all Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) for listed businesses and all locations of multi-establishment companies. (EINs) may represent one or more establishments and firms may have one or more (EINs).

In the initial sampling, companies are stratified by major and minor kind of business, and by estimated receipts or revenue. All companies with total receipts above applicable size cutoffs are included in the survey and report for all their service industry locations. In a second stage, (EINs) of unselected companies are stratified by major kind of business and receipts or revenue. Within each stratum a simple random sample of (EINs) is selected.

The initial sample is updated quarterly to reflect births; and deaths adding new employer businesses identified in the business and professional classification survey and dropping firms and (EINs) that are no longer active. During interim periods, service non-employer and other businesses are represented by administrative records data or imputed values. Learn More »