Business and economic statistics are among the most frequently requested and most difficult to explain in any library setting. Users want to know how industries are performing, where business activity is concentrated, how revenues and payroll compare across sectors, what is changing in the economy, and how changes in economic data affect individual’s lives. For decades, answering those questions meant navigating a fragmented landscape of separate federal surveys—each with its own methodology, its own schedule, and
its own learning curve. That landscape has changed.
The Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES) is the U.S. Census Bureau’s redesigned annual business statistics program, built to consolidate seven legacy surveys, reduce respondent burden, and produce more unified data on the U.S. business economy (census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/annual-integrated-economic-survey-launches.html). It changes how business data can be found, explained, and reused. For information professionals, it is not simply another U.S. Census Bureau dataset to catalog or point users toward. It is a programmatic shift in how federal business data are collected, harmonized, and released—with real consequences for data quality, access, and public service. Understanding what the program is, what it replaced, and how to use it is now a core competency for anyone supporting business, economic, or policy research and an opportunity to promote data literacy.
Who Uses AIES and How
AIES is foundational infrastructure for the U.S. statistical system, not just a public-facing data product. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) uses AIES revenue and capital expenditure data to construct gross domestic product (GDP) estimates and the National Income and Product Accounts. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) uses AIES employment and payroll data to benchmark its own series. The Federal Reserve draws on AIES for business investment and sectoral analysis. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services uses healthcare industry data in constructing the National Health Expenditure Accounts, and the IRS and Department of the Treasury use it for tax gap analysis and revenue forecasting. This downstream dependency means errors or gaps in AIES data propagate through the entire federal statistical system—and that the survey carries significant policy weight.
Beyond federal agencies, AIES serves academic researchers in economics, business, and public policy; trade associations benchmarking member performance; consulting firms doing market sizing; journalists contextualizing economic trends; and students completing coursework and capstone projects. The consolidation of seven surveys into one makes library research consultations on this topic considerably more straightforward.
Information professionals occupy a unique position in the AIES user ecosystem. We are often the first point of contact for users who know they need economic data but don’t know where to find it or how to interpret it. Our role goes beyond pointing users to the AIES: We help users understand the company versus establishment distinction, interpret suppression flags, construct proper data citations, and navigate access tools. We also play an advocacy role: AIES depends on business participation, and response rates affect data quality. A non-responding business is not just a missing datapoint; it is a gap in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Business Register that affects the accuracy of every federal survey that follows.
The Modernization Story
To appreciate what AIES represents, it helps to understand the legacy landscape. For decades, the U.S. Census Bureau conducted seven distinct annual economic surveys, each covering a different slice of the economy. Data was presented at the national level:
- Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM)—Value of shipments, value added, payroll, employment, and capital expenditures for manufacturing industries; one
of the oldest and most widely used surveys in the federal statistical system
- Annual Retail Trade Survey (ARTS)—Sales, ecommerce revenues, inventories, and expenses for retail businesses
- Annual Wholesale Trade Survey (AWTS)—Sales, inventories, and expenses for wholesale trade businesses
- Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES)—Business investment in new and used structures and equipment, a key input for national accounts and economic forecasting
- Service Annual Survey (SAS)—Revenues, expenses, and financial data for service-sector businesses
- Report of Organization (COS)—Organizational structure of multi-establishment companies, essential for understanding enterprise-level versus establishment-level economic activity and used to update the Business Register
- Manufacturers’ Unfilled Orders Survey (M3UFO)—Unfilled orders and inventory data for durable
goods manufacturers, a leading indicator of manufacturing activity
Each survey had its own sample design, questionnaire, methodology, release schedule, and documentation. For experienced researchers and librarians, navigating this landscape required significant institutional knowledge. For new users—students, small business owners, journalists, policy analysts, the public—the fragmentation was a genuine barrier. Instead of directing users to a single authoritative source, information professionals had to maintain a working knowledge of seven overlapping programs and explain why the same basic question might require consulting more than one of them.
The CNSTAT Review and the Case for Change
The impetus for consolidation came from a formal review by the Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT). In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences released its findings evaluating the quality and relevance of federal statistical programs: nationalacademies.org/read/25098. CNSTAT identified significant redundancy and inefficiency and recommended consolidating seven surveys into a single modernized program. The U.S. Census Bureau began planning this as early as 2015, with the formal re-engineering effort gaining momentum through the early 2020s.
Official data for AIES collection launched in March 2024. The first preliminary data release—covering the 2023 survey year—arrived in July 2025 (census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025/aies-releases-first-dataset.html), and the main dataset followed in February 2026 (census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2026/02/first-aies-data-release.html). The consolidation serves three goals simultaneously: increasing data quality by harmonizing definitions and methodology across sectors; reducing respondent burden by asking businesses to complete one survey instead of potentially several; and improving operational efficiency at the U.S. Census Bureau itself. AIES is also the first U.S. Census Bureau survey to move to the Data Ingest and Collection for the Enterprise platform, with data collected online using Centurion, the Bureau’s secure survey collection tool.
Three distinctions matter for reference work. AIES is not the Annual Business Survey (ABS), which focuses specifically on business ownership characteristics—race, ethnicity, gender, and veteran status. The ABS remains a separate program. It is not replacing County Business Patterns (CBP), which draws administrative data from the Business Register to provide subnational data on establishment counts, employee size, and payroll. And it is not the Economic Census, conducted every 5 years to provide the deepest, most granular snapshot of the U.S. economy. AIES fills the annual gap between Economic Census years, providing continuity and trend data. Keeping these four programs distinct is one of the most useful things an information professional can do when helping users navigate federal business statistics.
A Closer Look AT What AIES Collects
Scope, coverage, and sampling: AIES covers businesses across the major sectors of the American economy, organized by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The survey uses 2017 NAICS codes for 2023 and 2024 data and will transition to 2022 NAICS for 2025 data—a change that librarians and data specialists should keep in mind when helping users compare data over time.
Out-of-scope industries include most agriculture, rail transportation, postal service, pension and welfare funds, religious and civic organizations, and public administration. Knowing these exclusions is as important as knowing what is included. A researcher asking about farm revenue or nonprofit finances will need to be directed elsewhere.
The sampling frame draws from the Business Register and covers employer businesses in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It draws a new sample annually. The largest and most economically significant companies still appear in successive samples due to certainty criteria; smaller businesses can rotate in and out, reducing burden and allowing AIES to draw on the most current information from a broader range of businesses between Economic Census releases.
Because AIES is a sample survey, its published values are estimates of industry totals rather than averages for individual establishments. Users who need an industry average may consider combining AIES totals with establishment counts from CBP, but the U.S. Census Bureau cautions against this because differences in methodology, coverage, and reference periods may affect comparability.
The Business Register connection: Behind every federal business survey is a list—and for the U.S. Census Bureau, that list is the Business Register (census.gov/econ/overview/mu0600.html). It is not just a sampling frame; it is the connective tissue of the entire federal economic statistics system.
Formerly, the COS played an indispensable and often underappreciated role in keeping that list current (census.gov/programs-surveys/cos/information.html). When a large company opened a new facility, spun off a subsidiary, reclassified a division under a different NAICS code, or closed a regional office, the COS was the mechanism by which the U.S. Census Bureau learned of it. Without that feedback loop, the Business Register would gradually drift out of alignment with the actual structure of the economy—and every survey that drew from it would inherit that error.
Now integrated into AIES, that register-maintenance function continues with broader reach. When AIES respondents report on their organizational structure, establishment counts, industry classifications, and geographic footprint, that information flows back into the Register and improves the accuracy of future surveys (census.gov/programs-surveys/aies/about.html). For those encouraging survey participation, this is a compelling argument: A non-responding business is not just a gap in one dataset—it is a gap that propagates across multiple federal programs.
Company, Establishment,
and the Unit of Analysis
An important concept in AIES is the distinction between a company, an establishment, and an industry-level reporting unit. A company (also called an enterprise or firm) is the legal business entity and may operate at one location or thousands. An establishment is a single physical location where business is conducted—a store, a factory, a warehouse, a branch office. For multi-establishment companies, AIES often collects detailed data at the Kind of Activity Unit (KAU) level, which combines establishments within the same company that operate in the same industry. For single-unit businesses, these distinctions largely disappear because the company, establishment, and KAU represent the same operation. Understanding the level at which a particular item is collected or published is essential for interpreting the data correctly.
The AIES questionnaire includes about 130 questions depending on the industry. Core variables asked across all firms fall into four categories:
Financial performance: Revenue, operating expenses by category, inventories (beginning and end-of-year values, critical for retail, wholesale, and manufacturing analysis), and total assets.
Payroll and employment: Annual payroll and number of paid employees across multiple pay periods to capture seasonal variation—figures that complement BLS data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
Capital investment: Expenditures on new and used structures, machinery, equipment, and vehicles—data that feed directly into the BEA calculations of GDP and the National Income and Product Accounts, implying that AIES responses have a measurable effect on the headline economic statistics that drive policy and market decisions.
Emerging economy indicators: AIES reflects the U.S. Census Bureau’s intent to measure the modern economy, not just traditional business activity. For example, questions on robotic equipment provide new insight into business investment in automation. And beginning with the 2025 collection, AIES started quantitatively measuring all business expenditures on AI—with the program expecting to continue refining how it measures the implementation of AI and other emerging technologies in future survey cycles.
Finding AIES Data
AIES data is freely available through multiple channels, with data.census.gov as the primary public access point. It requires no technical expertise and supports table customization, time series filtering, and downloads in Excel, CSV, or zip formats. Researchers needing complete datasets can use the U.S. Census Bureau’s FTP directory. Programmers and data scientists can query AIES through the U.S. Census Bureau API, which returns data in HTML, XML, or JSON formats. The Federal Reserve Economic Data, aka FRED, platform aggregates selected AIES-derived time series alongside macroeconomic indicators. And researchers needing access to confidential business-level or linked microdata can apply through the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers network—37 secure locations typically housed at major research universities, where approved researchers work under strict disclosure protocols.
All U.S. Census Bureau statistics, including AIES, are in the public domain—no copyright, no restrictions. Public domain or open data status does not mean citation-free, however. A complete data citation includes who is responsible for the data, the program title, the specific table, the retrieval date, and the URL. This is not a legal obligation, but an ethical, professional, and scholarly one.
As AIES continues to evolve and additional data is released, users should review the methodology and table notes before drawing conclusions. Helping users locate and apply this documentation is one of the most practical contributions an information professional can make in any data consultation.
The Future of Business Statistics
The AIES is more than an administrative consolidation. It represents a deliberate modernization of how the U.S. measures its economy—one that reflects the realities of a service-dominated, digitally mediated, and increasingly automated business landscape. The U.S. Census Bureau is building a data infrastructure for the economy of the present and future, not just the past.
The seven surveys are gone. The AIES is here. And for those of us who help people find and use data, that is very good news.
