Questions this answers

5 · best fit first
QuestionPrimary fit
Business age distribution

The governmental BDS API and full files publish firm- and establishment-age classes, including startup/age-zero and left-censored classes, together with firm, establishment, and employment counts by supported geography, NAICS, year, and size. This directly supplies operating-age distributions; it does not substitute registry formation age for employment-based age.

QuestionPrimary fit
Business formation and closure trends

BDS publishes annual establishment entries and exits with explicit rates and denominators, age-zero firm startup tabulations, and firm-death counts by supported geography, NAICS, and year. Its measures describe employment-based operating openings, closures, startups, and shutdowns rather than applications or registry filings.

QuestionPrimary fit
Business population counts

BDS publishes firm and establishment counts by supported geography, NAICS, reference year, and documented firm or establishment employment-size class. Counts are employer-population aggregates under BDS definitions and must not be summed across lower-level cells as unique national firms.

QuestionPrimary fit
Establishment stock change trends

BDS supplies annual establishment stock counts together with gross establishment entries, exits, and their rates for the same supported area, industry, and year dimensions. Comparing pinned annual stocks while retaining gross entry and exit directly establishes net establishment-stock change without conflating stock with flow.

QuestionStrong fit
Business economic scale distribution

BDS publishes firm and establishment employment-size classes with employment, firm, and establishment counts by supported geography, NAICS, and year, directly supporting employment-based scale composition. It supplies neither payroll nor receipts/revenue, so the edge is limited to the documented employment component.

Fields it delivers

26 fields
CoverageNational

First-party product documentation identifies a United States-wide or U.S. federal footprint. US denotes the fifty states and District of Columbia and does not imply separately coded territories.

Access & termsFree

The publisher provides the cited public API, download, lookup, or report directly, with no subscription, order form, or per-use payment required. An ordinary eligible business buyer can therefore use the standing route free of monetary cost, subject to any linked terms.

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