This first-ever report describes findings from the merging of two Census Bureau data products, the 2007 Profile of U.S. Exporting Companies (the Profile) and the 2007 Survey of Business Owners (SBO). The Profile is an annual database of commingled U.S. exports and business characteristics, compiled from Electronic Export Information filed through the Automated Export System, received from Canada through the Data Exchange, or by paper Shipper’s Export Declarations. The SBO, part of the Census Bureau’s five-yearly Economic Census, provides the only comprehensive, regularly collected source of information on selected economic and demographic characteristics of U.S. businesses and their owners by gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status.
The merged data from the 2007 Profile and the 2007 SBO provide new insights on the ownership and performance of U.S. exporting firms. This report focuses on the characteristics of “classifiable firms,” businesses whose ownership is classifiable by their gender, ethnicity, race, and veteran status.
For information on confidentiality, sampling error, nonsampling error, and definitions for the Survey of Business Owners, see below; for the Profile of U.S. Exporting Companies, see www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/edb/2008/techdoc.pdf