Business Formation Statistics (BFS) provide timely data about early-stage business formations at the national, regional, and state level. BFS use data from the Internal Revenue Service's Employer Identification Number Applications (Form SS-4) to create time series on the number of business applications filed. These data can enhance the ability of researchers, policymakers, analysts, and businesses to assess recent national and local trends in business formation, monitor the state of entrepreneurial activity, and anticipate and respond to shifts in economic conditions.
During recent months, the Census Bureau has prioritized providing high-frequency statistics to users with the publication of weekly data products such as the Business Trends and Outlook Survey and Household Pulse Survey. While BFS were initially published at the quarterly level, research had been underway to produce higher frequency statistics since the EIN applications data is delivered weekly to the Census Bureau. The introduction of weekly BFS in April provided data users with timely data on trends in business activity.
Data users have expressed interest in the weekly BFS data by industry. In response, the Census Bureau is providing an updated release of weekly Business Applications data by industry for 2006 through 2023.
The Census Bureau classifies data by industry using an automated industry-coding program for assigning North American Industry Classification (NAICS) codes to new businesses filing the SS-4 form. The automated industry-coding program is based on established patterns in the business name and descriptions provided on the SS-4 form. This auto-coding process assigned NAICS codes to over 80% of all incoming applications in 2020. For some of the applications that did not receive a NAICS code during the auto-coding process, BFS staff used NAICS codes assigned by the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are still some applications where there was not enough information available to assign a NAICS code. For the remaining unclassified applications, we are exploring the use of machine learning techniques to assign NAICS codes for future publications.
These NAICS-based BFS series provide insight into the industry composition of the overall BFS application counts. We now publish NAICS-based BFS series as part of our standard Monthly BFS releases. We continue to improve the process for assigning NAICS codes to business applications using existing Census Bureau classification methods combined with new machine learning techniques. We continue to refine the NAICS assignments and these results may be revised in a future publication.
Because of rounding, the weekly NAICS BFS series do not add up to the published weekly BFS estimates and the three-digit NAICS series do not add up to the two-digit NAICS series.
The weekly BFS NAICS data are provided in two .csv files: one with Business Applications counts by industry sectors and one with Business Applications counts by industry sub-sectors. Data are provided for each week in 2006 through 2023. For help with using the files, please visit the BFS Weekly NAICS Data Dictionary and they week date csv file.
The Census Bureau has reviewed the weekly data by NAICS code product to ensure appropriate access, use, and disclosure avoidance protection of the confidential source data (Project No. P-7515311, Disclosure Review Board (DRB) approval number: CBDRB‑FY24‑0149).
For more information on NAICS, please visit the Census Bureau's NAICS information page.
