The published data from the 2017 Economic Census will reflect many changes from the data that was published in the 2012 Economic Census. These changes mirror the ever-changing U.S. economy, communities, and data user needs. Below is a summary of these key changes and links to more information.

For a list of the data products for the 2017 Economic Census, see the high-level release schedule at: 2017 Economic Census Planned Data Product Releases

Geographic Areas

The 2017 Economic Census will publish data to reflect the ever changing geographic areas as of January 2017. Reference materials that highlight the changes from the 2012 Economic Census will be provided on this site, including maps and documents that highlight the changes to:

• Metro Areas – the Core Based Statistical Areas in 15 states had some type of change.
• Counties – Alaska, South Dakota, and Virginia had changes to 1 or more counties.
• Economic Places – every state had places with area gain, loss, and/or code or name changes. There are 442 new Economic Places being recognized and 171 places that are being dropped for 2017, primarily due to population decline.

NAICS

The 2017 Economic Census will be the first Census program to publish data on the 2017 North American Industry Classification System. Six of the eighteen sectors covered by the Economic Census will see changes to the codes published. These changes include:

• One-to-one recodes – industries with no content change but with a code change.
• Many-to-one combinations – 2012 NAICS codes that were combined to form a new 2017 code.
• Many-to-many combinations – 2 or more 2017 codes that were created from parts of 2 or more 2012 codes.

North American Product Classification System (NAPCS)-Based Product Lines

A key offering from the 2017 Economic Census is a cross-sector presentation of NAPCS-based product lines, which are detailed breakouts of products made and sold and services provided. The Products by State tables have been consolidated and standardized across sectors beginning with 2017. For Geographic series changes, please see: Geographic Change Notes. Similar data from the 2012 Economic Census were only provided in separate data tables by sector.

Concordances between 2012 product codes and 2017 NAPCS-based product codes are available at:       

• 2017 NAPCS-Based Collection Code to 2012 Product Code
• 2012 Product Code to 2017 NAPCS-Based Collection Code

Additional information on NAPCS is available at: https://www.census.gov/naics/napcs/

Other Changes

The data products from the 2017 Economic Census will include a number of structural and content changes. These include:

• The new “First Look” report – this new report will feature data not available in the initial “Advance Report” release in prior Economic Censuses.
• Consolidated “Size” reports – These data tables which provide detailed breakouts based on the employment and sales/revenue size of establishments or firms, as well as concentration ratios, were consolidated and standardized across sectors beginning in 2017. Prior to 2017, these were published in separate tables by sector.
  • As part of the standardization across sectors, some tables, such as EC1231SR1 – Concentration by Value Added, are no longer being produced.
  • One measure of competition in an industry is via Concentration Ratios. These generally take 2 forms:
    • Firm Concentration Ratio
      • Concentration Ratio was shown prior to 2017 for other sectors, however, 2017 is the first time Concentration Ratio is available for the Mining (21) and Construction (23) sectors.
      • Firm Concentration Ratios are given for the 4, 8, 20, and 50 largest firms.
    • Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI)
      • HHI is calculated using the top 50 firms. 
      • 2017 is the first time HHI is available for sectors other than Manufacturing.
  • For Firm Concentration Ratio and HHI, see: EC1700SIZECONCEN - Selected Sectors: Concentration of Largest Firms for the U.S.: 2017
• Added and dropped Miscellaneous Subjects reports – 38 tables from the 2012 Economic Census are being dropped, and 7 new tables are being added. Also, the tables showing data by Class of Customer, Enterprise Support, and Exported Services are similarly being consolidated.
• Table names have been changed in 2017 to use a naming convention beginning with PPYYSS where PP= program, YY= year, and SS= 2-digit NAICS sector. For example, table EC1742BASIC is the basic statistics table for the 2017 Economic Census for sector 42 Wholesale only. Some tables are similar to prior year economic censuses, but the names of the tables have changed. For instance, EC1744BASIC is comparable to EC1244A1. Please note table descriptions when comparing across years.
  • NAICS Sector “00” - Table EC1700BASIC is the basic statistics table for the 2017 Economic Census that shows data for all the sectors appearing together in one table. For the 2017 Economic Census, NAICS Sector 00 denotes multi-sector tables.

Note: NAICS Sector "00" is not an official NAICS sector. For the Economic Census of Island Areas (IA) and other programs outside of the economic census, sector 00 may denote a total for all sectors.

• New disclosure rules – In prior Economic Censuses, the number of establishments was published even when the other statistics for an industry and geography were withheld due to disclosure. Due to additional protection requirements from recently updated Census Bureau and IRS data confidentiality agreements the data will no longer be available. For 2017, new privacy rules will result in the establishment count being suppressed when less than 3 or when the other statistics are suppressed.
• Local areas published by sector – Zip code will no longer be available for any sector (See 2017 Geographic Coverage), place-level data will no longer be available for the Manufacturing sector, and the NAICS and geographic levels published for other sectors may be adjusted based on data quality and privacy issues.
• New dissemination platform (data.census.gov) – data tables from the 2017 Economic Census will be published on this new dissemination platform. The previous platform, American FactFinder, was discontinued and historical data from the 2012 Economic Census migrated to data.census.gov.
• OPTAX variable - OPTAX ("Type of operation or tax status code") was split into its respective parts, TYPOP ("Type of operation code") and TAXSTAT ("Tax status code"). In the 2012 data.census.gov tables, the variable name was adjusted to match the 2017 tables ("Type of operation code" and "Tax status code" for applicable sectors). However, the 2012 API and FTP files still use OPTAX.