Exploring the Insights: 2024 County Business Patterns Provide Key Economic Data to Private, Public and Local Entities

In 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau released the annual County Business Patterns (CBP), providing subnational economic data by industry. This data includes the number of establishments, employment during the week of March 12, first quarter payroll, and annual payroll for nearly 1,000 industries defined by the 2017 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).

The CBP is valuable for studying economic activity in small areas, as federal agencies use it to assess employee concentrations and industry trends. Private businesses utilize the data for market analysis, measuring the effectiveness of sales and advertising programs, setting sales quotas, and developing budgets. State and local government offices rely on the data to evaluate business changes, develop fiscal policies, and plan future policies and programs.

The CBP is sourced from the Business Register, a database maintained by the Census Bureau that includes information on all known single- and multi-establishment employer companies. This database mainly contains nonsurvey data, typically tax return information. The CBP datasets from 1986 to the current reference year can be downloaded from census.gov/data/census-programs/county-business-patterns/county-business-patterns-dataset/. Additionally, CBP tables from 2012 to the current reference year are available on census.gov/data/.