Nonemployer Statistics

Nonemployer Statistics

Nonemployer Statistics is an annual series that provides subnational economic data for businesses that have no paid employees and are subject to federal income tax. The data consist of the number of businesses and total receipts by industry. Most nonemployers are self-employed individuals operating unincorporated businesses (known as sole proprietorships), which may or may not be the owner's principal source of income.

The majority of all business establishments in the United States are nonemployers, yet these firms average less than 4 percent of all sales and receipts nationally. Due to their small economic impact, these firms are excluded from most other Census Bureau business statistics (the primary exception being the Survey of Business Owners). The Nonemployers Statistics series is the primary resource available to study the scope and activities of nonemployers at a detailed geographic level. For complementary statistics on the firms that do have paid employees, refer to the County Business Patterns. Additional sources of data on small businesses include the Economic Census, and the Statistics of U.S. Businesses.

THE 2009 NONEMPLOYER STATISTICS WAS REISSUED ON AUGUST 15, 2012. IF YOU DOWNLOADED THE 2009 STATISTICS PRIOR TO THIS DATE, PLEASE DELETE AND DOWNLOAD THE CORRECTED FILE, OR REFER TO THE HTML TABLES.

What occurred?

Prior to the scheduled 2010 release, Census Bureau staff detected an inconsistency in the incoming source files. The source agency inadvertently failed to provide all eligible nonemployer records for both the 2009 and 2010 publication years. Please visit the How the Data are Collected page for a description of the sources used to generate Nonemployer Statistics. The source agency was made aware of the issue and took immediate steps to correct the problem for current and future years. The 2010 Nonemployer Statistics release was delayed to incorporate the missing records, and the 2009 publication has been reissued.

How does this impact my analysis?

The original 2009 release under-reported both the number of partnerships nationwide and the total receipts value generated by partnerships across the country, with the largest impact occurring in Real Estate, and Mining industries.

For help accessing the data via hypertext tables or American FactFinder, please refer to the Data User Guide [PDF].

For frequently asked questions (FAQs) visit Ask.Census.Gov or click the FAQs tab at the top of the screen. This link will open a new page within this window. Enter 'nonemployer' into the search box to narrow the results.

¹ Metropolitan statistical areas have an urban core with 50,000 or more inhabitants. Micropolitan statistical areas have an urban core with 10,000 to 49,999 inhabitants. See definitions or maps for metropolitan and micropolitan areas as of November 2007. These definitions and maps are updated for Nonemployer data every five years to correspond with the schedule of the Economic Census. The next update will occur with the 2012 data release.