Microproduct data guideintermediate

Census County Business Patterns

Annual establishment, employment, and payroll counts by industry and county for building local industry-mix and site-selection tools.

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At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Medium · 0.001–2 GB
Formats
JSON, CSV
Access
API or Download
API key
Required
Provider
U.S. Census Bureau
Updates
Annual
Data terms
U.S. Census Bureau API Terms of Service

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

County Business Patterns counts establishments with paid employees by NAICS and geography. Start with one state and the all-industry NAICS code. Employment is a March 12 snapshot, payroll can be suppressed, and CBP excludes most government and self-employed activity.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • A free Census Data API key saved in the CENSUS_API_KEY environment variable
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Request a free Census Data API key and open the CBP program page.
  2. 2.Review the current year variables for establishments, employment, and payroll.
  3. 3.Request all-industry county totals for one state.
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3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import os
import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.census.gov/data/2023/cbp",
    params={
        "get": "NAME,ESTAB,EMP,PAYANN,NAICS2017_LABEL",
        "for": "county:*",
        "in": "state:08",
        "NAICS2017": "00",
        "key": os.environ["CENSUS_API_KEY"],
    },
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
rows = response.json()
counties = pd.DataFrame(rows[1:], columns=rows[0])
print(counties.head())
4

Test a useful signal

Rank one state's counties by establishment counts

Test whether CBP can describe which counties hold the most paid employers.

  1. 01Keep county name, establishments, employment, and annual payroll as numbers.
  2. 02Rank counties by establishments and flag suppressed payroll cells.
  3. 03Explain that March employment, NAICS suppression, and the exclusion of most government work limit a local industry story.

Dataset details

U.S. Census Bureau is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-18. Temporal coverage: 1986-present.

Theme

Markets & Economics

Domains

Local EconomicsBusinessLabor Economics

Data types

TabularSurvey Estimates

Tasks

Market SizingSite SelectionIndustry Analysis

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONCSV

Provider

U.S. Census Bureau

Data terms

U.S. Census Bureau API Terms of Service