Seven legacy annual economic surveys have all had their final releases in their current format and are now integrated into a single survey – the AIES.
Source: census.gov
Written by: Nick Orsini, Associate Director for Economic Programs
As part of our ongoing commitment to innovation and to address our many stakeholder needs, the Economic Directorate has been working across all areas of the U.S. Census Bureau to reengineer our annual economic surveys. This process began in 2015, when the Census Bureau asked the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine to assemble a panel to conduct a comprehensive review of our annual economic surveys. Their findings and recommendations are summarized in this 2018 report “Reengineering the Census Bureau’s Annual Economic Surveys,” resulting in the Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES) that began data collection March 15.
Seven legacy annual economic surveys listed below have all had their final releases in their current format and are now integrated into a single survey – the AIES.
- Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES).
- Annual Retail Trade Survey (ARTS).
- Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM).
- Annual Wholesale Trade Survey (AWTS).
- Manufacturers’ Unfilled Orders Survey (M3UFO).
- Report of Organization (COS).
- Service Annual Survey (SAS).
For me, this integration represents how we are adapting to our ever-changing economy where economic activity does not always fall into one category. While we will continue to produce data by industry and sector, the vision of AIES is the integration of the data as well as the processes. By being open to doing surveys differently and more efficiently and not being limited by past practices, we are able to transform our business statistics, easily allowing for more robust data products that are cross-cutting rather than program-specific.
We now ask businesses to report their annual information only once a year, eliminating duplicate requests, harmonizing data content and reporting units, and reducing respondent burden. Also, through our extensive research and outreach efforts, we have incorporated respondent’s requests to use spreadsheets to report their more detailed data. Now, after a respondent provides basic company-level characteristics, we will generate a customized spreadsheet with the questions specific to their business. In August 2023, we asked approximately 8,300 companies to participate in the 2022 AIES, which served as a dress rehearsal of our collection instrument and processes. We used this experience to examine patterns of response and determine what changes or additional support were needed to meet the needs of our respondents for the future AIES data collection.
AIES is also the first survey to move to the new Data Ingest and Collection for the Enterprise (DICE) platform, which allows more flexibility in adjusting survey content and the ability to incorporate data from nontraditional sources, expanding beyond conventional survey collection methods. The DICE platform empowers statisticians and subject matter experts to efficiently adjust content that is relevant to all sampled firms or for specific industries and geographic areas, incorporating near real-time analysis for swift adaptation to evolving economic trends and data dynamics. By using the Census Bureau’s new infrastructure platforms, AIES will take advantage of the most up-to-date technology and computing environments to greatly improve the flow of data from collection to dissemination.
This new reporting and data collection strategy required a new approach to data analysis as well. AIES encompasses most sectors of the U.S. economy, allowing complex companies who touch multiple sectors to not only report across sectors, but to also be reviewed in a cohesive way. We can now easily combine our traditional industry-specific review and analysis, which helps analysts gain insights into trends, benchmarks and overall market dynamics, with a wider, more comprehensive company level review.
Finally, we looked at ways to innovate the dissemination of AIES data. AIES will give users more options than ever to view output. We will have two application programming interface (API) files that will drive all data products related to AIES. One will house NAPCS data, which is our product data based on the North American Product Classification System, and the other API will have all other industry-level data. In addition to releasing data in a tabular format by way of data.census.gov, we will be using technology to craft captivating and dynamic visualizations by producing interactive and customizable dashboards for data users.
Our hard work and collaboration yielded many advancements, including standardized and more granular content; streamlined, automated processes; and progressive decision-making, all leading to this milestone – the mailout of the 2023 AIES. As the Census Bureau is the only provider of comprehensive, annual national and subnational data on businesses, this is a huge accomplishment. Approximately 370,000 companies, spanning large, medium, and small enterprises, and encompassing nearly 2 million business establishments, are asked to complete the survey, which covers most industries and geographic areas in the United States. Data are scheduled to be released beginning in July 2025.
Our products and methods will continue to evolve as our society and economy grow in size and complexity – and the new AIES is a great example of how we are currently innovating and how we will meet future measurement challenges. The Economic Directorate, and the Census Bureau as a whole, continue to strive to provide timely, accurate, comprehensive and relevant information to data users about the nation’s people and economy.
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