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Handbook of Methods Business Employment Dynamics Presentation

Business Employment Dynamics: Presentation

The Business Employment Dynamics (BED) data series are published quarterly, approximately 7 months after the reference period. BED data are offered at the national and state levels. Data on establishment births and deaths, as well as establishment age and survival are also available. In addition, the BED program publishes firm-size data, available for nine size classes defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as well as the standard “small” (1–49 employees) “medium” (50–249 employees) and “large” (250 or more employees) size classes. The most up-to-date data can be found on the BED website: https://www.bls.gov/bdm/.

Uses

BED data products have a number of uses. For example, the Federal Reserve Board uses BED data on job creation and destruction. Regional Federal Reserve Banks, such as the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, use BED data for regional analysis. At the state level, state labor market information bureaus use BED data to compare state and national business cycle trends. BED data also are used by other federal agencies; for example, the Small Business Administration uses BED data tabulated by size of firm to measure job creation and destruction by small businesses. National and local media use BED job-flow and firm-size data to explain and discuss economic trends. On an international level, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses BED birth and death data to measure entrepreneurship in the OECD–Eurostat Entrepreneurship Indicators Programme.

Data available

Data on the private sector are available for the nation as a whole and by NAICS sector and subsector. In addition, BED state data are available by NAICS sector.

The BED program also publishes data on firms by size class of the firm. Size-class data are available for small (1–49 employees), medium (50–249 employees), and large (250 or more employees) firms, as well as for nine OMB-defined size classes.

The longitudinal aspect of BED data allows for the publication of data on business births and deaths and on the age of establishments.

Research

The BED program allows for multiple research pathways. Staff are continuously working on new data products for the public. Researchers have used BED data to examine the role of high-growth firms, also known as “gazelles,” in the labor market. Other research interests include, but are not limited to, the geospatial distribution of employment, firm sizes and the business cycle, and the role of younger and older establishments in the labor market.