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The Business Dynamics Statistics: Describing the Evolution of the U.S. Economy from 1978-2019

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Goetz
  • Martha Stinson

Abstract

The U.S. Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) provide annual measures of how many businesses begin, end, or continue their operations and the associated job creation and destruction. The BDS is a valuable resource for information on the U.S. economy because of its long time series (1978-2019), its complete coverage (all private sector, non-farm U.S. businesses), and its tabulations for both individual establishments and the firms that own and control them. In this paper, we use the publicly available BDS data to describe the dynamics of the economy over the past 40 years. We highlight the increasing concentration of employment at old and large firms and describe net job creation trends in the manufacturing, retail, information, food/accommodations, and healthcare industry sectors. We show how the spatial distribution of employment has changed, first moving away from the largest cities and then back again. Finally, we show long-run trends for a group of industries we classify as high-tech and explore how the share of employment at small and young firms has changed for this part of the economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Goetz & Martha Stinson, 2021. "The Business Dynamics Statistics: Describing the Evolution of the U.S. Economy from 1978-2019," Working Papers 21-33, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:21-33
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    File URL: https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2021/CES-WP-21-33.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nathan Goldschlag & Javier Miranda, 2020. "Business dynamics statistics of High Tech industries," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 3-30, January.
    2. Melissa Chow & Teresa C. Fort & Christopher Goetz & Nathan Goldschlag & James Lawrence & Elisabeth Ruth Perlman & Martha Stinson & T. Kirk White, 2021. "Redesigning the Longitudinal Business Database," Working Papers 21-08, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    3. David Autor & David Dorn & Lawrence F Katz & Christina Patterson & John Van Reenen, 2020. "The Fall of the Labor Share and the Rise of Superstar Firms [“Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor”]," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(2), pages 645-709.
    4. John Haltiwanger & Ron S. Jarmin & Javier Miranda, 2013. "Who Creates Jobs? Small versus Large versus Young," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 347-361, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Melissa Chow & Martha Stinson, 2025. "Business Dynamics Statistics of Coastal Counties: A Description of Differences in Coastal Areas Over Time," Working Papers 25-08, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.

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