Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns. Updated annually. County Business Patterns (CBP) Includes U.S., States, and Counties; includes Puerto Rico and Municipios (county-equivalents).
Definitions:
See Glossary
An establishment is a single physical location at which business is conducted orwhere services or industrial operations are performed. It is not necessarilyidentical with a company or enterprise, which may consist of one establishmentor more. When two or more activities are conducted at a single location under asingle ownership, all activities are generally grouped together as a singleestablishment and classified on the basis of its major activity. Establishmentswith paid employees include all locations with paid employees any time during theyear. (A separate data item, Nonemployer establishments, provides the number ofestablishments without paid employees, (mostly self-employed individuals.)Establishment counts represent the number of locations with paid employees anytime during the year. This series excludes government establishments except forwholesale liquor establishments (NAICS 4248), retail liquor stores (NAICS44531), Book publishers (NAICS 511130), Federally-chartered savingsinstitutions (NAICS 522120), Federally-chartered credit unions (NAICS 522130),and hospitals (NAICS 622).
Paid employment (Mid-march employment) consists of full- and part-time employees,including salaried officers and executives of corporations, who are on thepayroll in the pay period including March 12. Included are employees on paidsick leave, holidays, and vacations; not included are proprietors and partnersof unincorporated businesses.
Employment percent change is computed by subtracting the previous year's employment figurefrom the current year employment figure; this result is then divided by theprevious year's employment figure to obtain the percentage change.
Payroll includes all forms of compensation, such as salaries, wages, commissions,dismissal pay, bonuses, vacation allowances, sick-leave pay, and employeecontributions to qualified pension plans paid during the year to all employees.For corporations, payroll includes amounts paid to officers and executives; forunincorporated businesses, it does not include profit or other compensation ofproprietors or partners. Payroll is reported before deductions for socialsecurity, income tax, insurance, union dues, etc. This definition of payroll isthe same as that used by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on Form 941 astaxable Medicare Wages and Tips (even if not subject to income or FICA tax).First-quarter payroll consists of payroll during the January-to-March quarter.
Scope and Methodology:
Figures for employer establishments with paid employees for the U.S. Puerto Rico andthe Island Areas are published in County Business Patterns (CBP), an annualstatistical series. Basic data items are extracted from the Business Register,a file of all known single and multiestablishment companies maintained andupdated by the Bureau of the Census from various Census Bureau programs, suchas the 5-year Economic Census, the annual Company Organization Survey, theAnnual Survey of Manufactures, and Current Business Surveys, as well as fromadministrative records of the Internal Revenue Service, Bureau of Labor Statistics,and the Social Security Administration.
Employers without a fixed location within a state (or of unknown county location) areincluded under a "Statewide" classification at the end of the countytables. This incomplete detail causes only a slight understatement of countyemployment.
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