Longitudinal Business Database

The Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) is a research dataset constructed at the Census Bureau using a variety of survey and administrative data sources. Currently, the LBD contains the universe of all U.S. business establishments with paid employees beginning in 1976. The LBD contains basic information on establishment size, industry, location and ownership that permit researchers to analyze establishment demographics. The LBD is updated annually.

The LBD offers researchers a number of features not available in other longitudinal datasets. These include:

Long Time Series - The LBD contains complete establishment histories from 1975. Precise birth and death year information are available for most establishments.

Industrial Scope - The LBD contains all employer establishments that are in scope for the Economic Census (i.e., all manufacturing, mining, construction, retail, wholesale, service, TCU and FIRE establishments) as well as a large number of public administration and other out of scope entities.

Improved Longitudinal linkages - In constructing the LBD, great care was taken to provide researchers with the most complete and accurate set of longitudinal establishment linkages possible. This substantially reduces the number spurious establishment births and deaths observed in the data. In addition, the LBD provides researchers with detailed flags that describe, for each establishment, the nature of the linkages over each year an establishment is observed in the data.

Linkages to other micro data - The research capabilities of the LBD can be greatly and easily enhanced by linking it to other establishment and firm information via the Employer Identification Number (EIN).