Reengineering the Census Bureau's Annual Economic Surveys (2018) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 5-18
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The need for change was driven by such factors as budget pressures, the growing difficulty in obtaining responses to business surveys, the growing desire from data users for more detailed information, and the perception that, in the face of increasing competition from privately produced data, official statistics from the Census Bureau are at risk of becoming less relevant. The Census Bureau's economic statistics programs include the quinquennial economic censuses and -- the subject of this Consensus Study Report -- a suite of annual economic surveys, which cover virtually every sector of the economy.
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cost effective to operate, and less burdensome on businesses.1 To provide expert input to its reengineering of the annual surveys, the Census Bureau requested a study by a panel convened under the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: see Box 1-1 for the statement of task to the Panel on Reengineering the Census Bureau's Annual Economic Surveys. For context, in this chapter we first review the history of the Census Bureau's economic statistics programs.
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1.1 ECONOMIC STATISTICS AT THE CENSUS BUREAU 1.1.1 Economic Censuses The U.S. Constitution mandated a decennial census of population, which was first conducted in 1790.
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. The Census Bureau began the Monthly Survey of Wholesale Trade in 1946 and the Annual Survey of Manufactures in 1949, to name just two examples of what is now an extensive portfolio of annual, quarterly, and monthly economic surveys.4 The quarterly and monthly economic surveys are fielded with the primary purpose of providing up-to-date key economic indicators as defined in Statistical Policy Directive No.
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The Census Bureau has other business statistics programs that are intended to provide estimates for states and smaller geographic areas, including not only the economic censuses, but also such programs as County Business Patterns (CBP) and the Longitudinal Employer-Household D ynamics Program (LEHD)
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, sampling frame, sample design, questionnaire design, data collection procedures, data processing, methods for filling in missing data, and data products and data dissemination methods. The panel focused its efforts on the Census Bureau's annual surveys of the private U.S.
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, conducted annually since 1978, provides detailed industry measures of sales, end-of-year inventories, inventory valuation, inventory outside the United States, total purchases of prod ucts, and total operating expenses for wholesale trade activities. Services The Service Annual Survey (SAS)
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bThe Census Bureau and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) will launch a new Annual Business Survey (ABS)
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In the panel's review of the existing suite of annual economic surveys, two topics that received significant attention were the Business Register and the definition of a statistical unit for data collection and estimation. The Business Register is the master list used as a sampling frame for all of the Bureau's private-economy censuses and surveys (although there are differences among the surveys in how frequently they refresh their samples)
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Many also indicated, however, that the data are not sufficiently timely and lack product and geographic detail, leading data users to turn to administrative data or to estimates from commercial vendors. The panel consulted with the staffs of two statistical agencies outside the United States -- Statistics Canada and Statistics Netherlands -- that have undertaken significant efforts to reengineer their business surveys.
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greater use of administrative records to achieve improvements in quality, timeliness, and burden reduction. Although response to the annual economic surveys, like the economic censuses, is required by law, the annual economic surveys have not been immune to the well-documented phenomenon of declining response to surveys of all kinds.
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Chapter 3 turns to the question of the universe that the annual surveys should sample, which requires considering the fundamental question of the definition of a business. The chapter addresses how the definition relates to the statistical units currently sampled by the annual economic surveys, the use of the Business Register as a sampling frame, improved methods for keeping the register up to date, including the use of information fed back from the annual surveys, and an Account Manager Program for larger enterprises.
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Finally, Chapter 8 presents the panel's recommendation for an integrated ABSS and outlines how the Census Bureau can manage the transition to an ABSS from the current state of largely disparate annual economic surveys.
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Panel on Research and Development Priorities for the U.S. Census Bureau's State and Local Government Statistics Program.
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