The Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES) is a program designed to provide more detailed and timely information on capital investment in structures and equipment by nonfarm enterprises. The data are used to improve the quality of current economic indicators of business investments, as well as the quarterly estimates of gross domestic product. The data also provide facts about trends in capital expenditures useful for identifying business opportunities, product development, and business planning.

2007

Background

The 2007 estimates presented in this report are based on data collected from a sample of 47,818 companies with employees and 15,000 businesses without employees. The sample frame for companies with employees was slightly more than 6.3 million and for companies without employees about 26.1 million. For those companies with employees, capital expenditures data are published for 135 industries. In addition, total capital expenditures, with no industry detail, are shown for the businesses without employees.

Composition of Industry Category Codes

Beginning with the 2004 ACES, industry categories used in the survey were comprised primarily of three-digit and selected four-digit industries from the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS): 2002. Industry combinations were developed through consultation with data users. In addition, a category was provided for structures and equipment expenditures serving multiple industries; for example, headquarters, regional offices, and central research laboratories.

Information Requested

Four survey forms (ACE-1(S), ACE-1(M), ACE-1(L), and ACE-2) were used for the 2007 ACES. The ACE-1(S), ACE- 1(M), and ACE-1(L) survey forms were mailed to a sample of 47,818 companies with employees. Recipients of these survey forms were requested to provide capital expenditures data for each industry in which they had activity and to classify these expenditures as new and used structures and equipment.

New structures and equipment include expenditures for new buildings and other structures, structures that have been previously owned but neither used nor occupied, new machinery and equipment, and other new depreciable assets. Used structures and equipment include expenditures for buildings and other structures which have been previously owned and occupied, secondhand machinery and equipment, and other used depreciable assets. In addition, these companies were asked to report new structures and equipment acquired under capital lease arrangements entered into during the survey year.

The ACE-2 survey form was mailed to a sample of approximately 15,000 businesses without employees. Capital expenditures data were requested separately for new and used structures and equipment. (Examples of ACE-1(S), ACE-1(M), ACE-1(L), and ACE-2 survey forms are in Questionnaires and Instructions.)

Questionnaires and Instructions

2007 ACES Questionnaire

Note on Disclosure

In accordance with federal law governing Census Bureau reports (Title 13 of the United States Code), no data are published that would disclose the identity or operations of

companies providing information. When the estimate for a specific data item cannot be shown without disclosing information for individual companies, the publication of that data item is suppressed. The process of suppression does not change the higher-level aggregate totals, so the integrity of the data is not adversely affected. The suppression techniques used ensure that individual company data cannot be identified from the higher-level aggregate totals.

Abbreviations and Symbols

The following abbreviations and symbols are used in this publication:

-	Represents zero.
D	The data is withheld (suppressed) to avoid disclosing data for individual enterprises. The data may be included at higher level totals where the individual enterprise's data is not disclosed due to aggregation.
NA	The data is Not Applicable.
NS	The difference in the two estimates being compared are not statistically significant at the Census Bureau standard of 90% confidence. This is also used for the estimate of percent change, where a NS notation means the estimate of percent change is not statistically different from 0%.
X	The estimate of the quality, using Relative Standard Error, is not able to be calculated reliably. This is due to how sampling variance is estimated when most, or all, of the sampled enterprises that had a chance to not be sampled did not report positive values for that item.
Z	The estimate is greater than 0, but still rounds to zero in the published units.

Page Last Revised - October 8, 2021

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