Inconsistencies between County Business Patterns and Bureau of Labor Statistics Coverage

When creating our data, we use Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Covered Employment and Wages data (also known as CEW, QCEW and ES202) as our benchmark as it is widely accepted and provides a broad spectrum of coverage for all wage and salary employment. It is also a means of capturing the most current data available for our employment and wage and salary income estimations. However, the data are inherently incomplete and must be supplemented in order to get a "full picture" of an economic region.

Like most government data, CEW data are subject to non-disclosure rules. To estimate non-disclosured values, we use County Business Patterns (CBP) data from the U.S. Census Bureau to get an idea of the overall size of the industry (based on the CBP's firm count by size class information).

Unfortunately, the data between the two are not always consistent, as demonstrated by Ralls County, Missouri. This county has come into question in the past and provides an excellent demonstration of the problem. The issues are illustrated in the table below.

Note that CBP reports 11 establishments, 483 jobs, and $19.1 million in wage and salary income in manufacturing in 2006 for this county. In contrast, the BLS reports 19 establishments, 1,242 jobs, and $42.6 million in wages and salary income in manufacturing in 2006 for the same county. IMPLAN datasets will only have those industries that exist in BLS data sets; thus, all the blank cells in the BLS column will be missing from the IMPLAN datasets.

 

Ralls County, Missouri 2006

Census Bureau CBP

Bureau of Labor Statistics CEW

Industry Code

Industry Code Description

Establishments

Establishments

31-33

Manufacturing

11

19

311222

Soybean processing

 

1

311611

Animal (except Poultry) Slaughtering

1

 

321113

Sawmills

 

1

321214

Truss Manufacturing

1

1

321999

All Other Miscellaneous Wood Product Manufacturing

1

 

325510

Paint and Coating Manufacturing

1

1

326220

Rubber and plastics hose and belting mfg.

 

1

326291

Rubber product mfg. for mechanical use

 

1

327310

Cement Manufacturing

1

1

327320

Ready-mix concrete manufacturing

 

1

327390

Other concrete product manufacturing

 

1

331521

Aluminum Die-Casting Foundries

1

 

332211

Cutlery and Flatware (except Precious) Manufacturing

1

 

332710

Machine Shops

1

2

332811

Metal Heat Treating

1

1

332813

Electroplating, anodizing, and coloring metal

 

1

333511

Industrial mold manufacturing

 

1

333514

Special Die and Tool, Die Set, Jig, and Fixture Manufacturing

1

1

333994

Industrial process furnace and oven mfg.

 

1

335929

Other communication and energy wire mfg.

 

2

339950

Sign Manufacturing

1

1

 

 Annual Survey of Manufactures Data

CBP and the Annual Survey of Manufacturing (ASM), for concurrent years, have a high degree of correspondence (about 90%). However, ASM is also inconsistent with BLS. The following two NAICS codes provide the most stark examples of these discrepancies at the US level.

  • NAICS code 334113: BLS reports 15,376 jobs and $1.6 billion in wages. ASM reports 1,138 jobs and $61 million in wages. (CBP reported 926 jobs). This is approximately 6-7% of BLS.

At the other end of the spectrum.

  • NAICS 322114: BLS reports 6,826 jobs and $321 million in wages, ASM reports 18,182 jobs and $790 million in wages. (CBP reported 18,401 jobs). This is approximately 2.6 times BLS.

In these instances, IMPLAN data will reflect BLS values.

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