From AEAStat staff:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/02/21/2020-03457/submission-for-omb-review-comment-request
The Census Bureau is conducting the Annual Business Survey (ABS). See
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/abs.html. The ABS replaced the five-year Survey of Business Owners (SBO) for employer businesses, the Annual Survey of Entrepreneurs (ASE), and the Business Research and Development (R&D) and Innovation for Microbusinesses (BRDI-M) surveys.
The ABS provides information on selected economic and demographic characteristics for businesses and business owners by sex, ethnicity, race, and veteran status. Further, the survey measures research and development for microbusinesses, new business topics such as innovation and technology, as well as other business characteristics. The ABS is sponsored by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) within the National Science Foundation (NSF) and conducted by the Census Bureau for five years (2018-2022).
The ABS includes all nonfarm employer businesses filing Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax forms as individual proprietorships, partnerships, or any other type of corporation, with receipts of $1,000 or more. The ABS sampled approximately 850,000 employer businesses for survey year 2018. Starting with survey year 2019, the sample was reduced to approximately 300,000 employer businesses annually (survey years 2019-2022) to reduce the burden on the respondents.
The sample size should yield summary-level estimates for women-, minority-, and veteran-owned businesses at the 2-digit NAICS, U.S., state and metropolitan statistical area (MSA) levels. The Census Bureau uses administrative data to estimate the probability that a firm is minority- or women-owned. Each firm is then placed in one of nine frames for sampling. The sampling frames are as follows: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic, Non-Hispanic White Men, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, Other, Publicly Owned, and Women.
The sample is stratified by state, industry, and frame. The Census Bureau selects some companies with certainty based on volume of sales, payroll, and number of paid employees or NAICS. All certainty cases are sure to be selected and represent only themselves.
The ABS is designed to incorporate new content each survey year based on topics of relevance. Each year the new module of questions is submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval.
The Census Bureau invites AEA members to provide comments to OMB by March 23, 2020 on proposed 2020 ABS content and methods. The proposed 2020 ABS instrument is available at
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/DownloadDocument?objectID=98910800 New questions on the 2020 ABS collect data on globalization and the relationship between domestic and foreign activities. These questions are found in 2020 ABS – Section E – Domestic and Foreign Transactions.
Description of ABS purpose, plans, and methods are in Supporting Statement Parts A and B at
https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewDocument?ref_nbr=202002-0607-002
A primer for AEA members on how to effectively respond to requests for comments is available at
https://www.aeaweb.org/content/file?id=5806