The Synthetic Longitudinal Business Database replicates the structure and statistical properties of the original confidential dataset, without using original content.

Overview:

• Experimental synthetic data product
• 21 million establishment records covering all sectors for the years 1976 – 2000
• Contains the establishment's synthetic 3–digit SIC code, first year, last year, annual payroll, annual employment, and multi–unit status
• Contains no geographic or firm-level information
• Unless validated, there is no guarantee results from the SynLBD reflect results from the underlying confidential data
• Significant improvements over an earlier limited version
• Ongoing research at the U.S. Census Bureau is seeking to develop a differentially private version of the SynLBD. The new version would extend the time series to the latest year of the confidential Longitudinal Business Database(LBD) and would use NAICS industry classifications. The research is also investigating the feasibility of adding geographic identifiers to the SynLBD.