The births and deaths of business establishments in the United States

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 131, Issue 12, 2008, Pages 3-18

  Sadeghi, Akbar ^a  

^a BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 65649117771     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. J.A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York, Harper, 1975 [originally published in 1942]), pp. 82-85.
2. For more details on gross job flows, see: Steven J. Davis, John C. Haltiwanger, and Scott Schuh, Job Creation and Job Destruction, (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1996).
3. See also John M. Abowd, John Haltiwanger, and Julia Lane, "Integrated Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data for the United States," American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, May 2004, pp. 224-29.
4. See also Timothy R. Pivetz, Michael A. Searson, and James R. Spletzer, "Measuring job and establishment flows with BLS longitudinal microdata," Monthly Labor Review, April 2001, pp. 13-20.
5. See Timothy Dunne, Mark J. Roberts, and Larry Samuelson, "Patterns of Firm Entry and Exit in U.S. Manufacturing Industries," Rand Journal of Economics, Winter 1988, pp. 495-515.
6. Timothy Dunne, Mark J. Roberts, and Larry Samuelson, "Plant Turnover and Gross Employment Flows in the U.S. Manufacturing Sector," Journal of Labor Economics, January 1989, pp. 48-71.
7. Steven J. Davis. and others, Job Creation and Job Destruction; James R. Spletzer, "The Contribution of Establishment Births and Deaths to Employment Growth," Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, January 2000, pp. 113-126.
8. Christopher L. Foote, "Trend Employment Growth and the Bunching of Job Creation and Destruction," Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 1988, pp. 809-834.
9. For a comprehensive review of employment dynamics, see Richard L. Clayton and James R. Spletzer, "Business Employment Dynamics," National Bureau of Economic Research, forthcoming. The survival of business establishments has been discussed in Amy E. Knapp and Merissa C. Piazza, "Business Employment Dynamics data: survival and longevity, II," Monthly Labor Review, September 2007, pp. 3-10.
10. For a complete description and analysis of Business Employment Dynamics data series, see James R. Spletzer, R. Jason Faberman, Akbar Sadeghi, David M. Talan, and Richard L. Clayton, "Business Employment Dynamics: new data on gross job gains and losses," Monthly Labor Review, April 2004, pp. 29-42.
11. See Nadim Ahmad, "A Proposed Framework for Business Demography Statistics," Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Statistics Directorate STD/DOC(2006)3, October 2006. Many of the methodological and measurement differences regarding birth, death and other concepts related to business demography statistics have been discussed and resolved in a joint effort by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and Eurostat in a recently published handbook entitled "EUROSTAT-OECD Manual on Business Demography Statistics," on the Internet at www.oecd.org/document/34/0,3343,en_2649_34233_39913698_1_1_1_1,00.html (visited Dec. 15, 2008).
12. Business Dynamics Statistics is another Census Bureau Program, and it is similar to Statistics of U.S. Businesses. See www.ces.census.gov/index.php/bds/bds_overview (visited Dec. 15, 2008).
13. See www.census.gov/csd/susb/defterm.html (visited Dec. 15, 2008).
14. For more information on Statistics of U.S. Businesses, see Ron S. Jarmin and Javier Miranda, "The Longitudinal Business Database, on the Internet at www.ces.census.gov/index.php/ces/cespapers?detail_key=101647 (visited Dec. 15, 2008); to open the document, click on "View Paper." See also Catherine Armington, Development of Business Data: Tracking Firm Counts, Growth, and Turnover by Size of Firms, SBA Office of Advocacy, Small Business Research Summary No. 245.
15. James R. Spletzer, "The Contribution of Establishment Births and Deaths to Employment Growth," Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, January 2000, pp. 113-26.
16. For the private business and private nonfarm business sectors, BLS defines the growth rate of multifactor productivity as "the growth rate of output less the growth rate of combined inputs of combined labor and capital." See www.bls.gov/bls/glossary.htm#M (visited Dec. 15, 2008).
17. Birth and death rates are defined as the number of births or deaths divided by total active establishments, and active establishments are the counts of establishments with positive employment in the third month of the current quarter. To be consistent with the BED program's methodology, the number of establishments in the current quarter is averaged with the number of establishments in the previous quarter, and the resulting figure is used as the denominator in calculating the rates.
18. See Business demography in Europe: Results for 10 Member States and Norway, Eurostat, 2004, available online at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-DV-04-001/EN/KS-DV- 04-001-EN.PDF. See also S. Michael Camp, The Innovation-Entrepreneurship NEXUS (Powell, Ohio, Advanced Research Technologies, LLC, 2005), available online at www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs256tot.pdf (visited Dec. 15, 2008).