The Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES) is a new survey designed to integrate and replace seven existing annual business surveys into one survey. The surveys being integrated and replaced by the AIES include:

• Annual Retail Trade Survey (ARTS)
• Annual Wholesale Trade Survey (AWTS)
• Service Annual Survey (SAS)
• Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM)
• Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES)
• Manufacturers’ Unfilled Orders Survey (M3UFO)
• Report of Organization
  

These seven surveys will be discontinued after the 2022 survey year.

The AIES will provide the only comprehensive national and subnational data on business revenues, expenses, and assets on an annual basis. The AIES is designed to combine Census Bureau collections to reduce respondent burden, increase data quality, and allow the Census Bureau to operate more efficiently to reduce long term costs.

Beginning in September 2023, the Census Bureau will conduct the 2022 AIES with approximately 8,500 companies. The AIES is mandatory and will collect survey year 2022 information. The small-scale AIES collection will mimic the collection instrument and procedures planned for the full-sample 2023 AIES collection in March 2024. This will allow the Census Bureau to examine patterns of response and to determine what additional support respondents will need in future collections. To minimize the burden imposed on companies already in one or more of the seven annual surveys that the AIES will replace, responses submitted for the 2022 AIES collection will fulfill survey year 2022 reporting requirements for the integrated surveys.

After conclusion of the 2022 AIES collection and based on refinements made to collection instrument and procedures, the Census Bureau will begin conducting the full-sample AIES in 2024, collecting survey year 2023 data. The 2023 AIES will select a stratified sequential random sample of approximately 385,000 companies from a frame of approximately 5.4 million companies constructed from the Business Register, which is the Census Bureau’s master business list.

Online reporting for the 2022 AIES collection will open in early September 2023. Data will be collected for survey year 2022.

Online reporting for the 2023 AIES collection will open in March 2024. Data will be collected for survey year 2023.

To help you prepare for online reporting, a summary of content planned for the AIES collection is provided below. (All materials are in Adobe PDF file format and are for informational purposes only) You may also view the letters sent to respondents about this survey by clicking on the links below (available in mid-June 2023).

Information will be available in mid-June 2023.

Title 13, United States Code (U.S.C.), Sections 131, 182, and 193 authorizes this collection. Response to the AIES is mandatory per Sections 224 and 225.

The U.S. Census Bureau is required by Section 9 of Title 13 (United States Code) to keep your information confidential and can use your responses only to produce statistics. The Census Bureau is not permitted to publicly release your responses in a way that could identify your business, organization, or institution. Per the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, your data are protected from cybersecurity risks through screening of the systems that transmit your data.

Below are a few ways to verify the legitimacy of this survey:

1. Ensure the web address provided in the letter is a "census.gov" domain.
2. Correspondence sent in the form of a letter or email will contain reporting instructions and a phone number for survey assistance. Any email correspondence related to this survey will come from a census.gov address.
3. On the sign-in screen, a warning message should be present stating the respondent is accessing a U.S. Government computer.
4. After clicking on the “Report Now” button in the Respondent Portal, the OMB Number and OMB Approval Expiration information will appear in the lower left on all screens of the electronic reporting instrument.