Presented by Alyson Plumb (U.S. Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau)
Discover the Census Bureau’s Business Formation Statistics (BFS) program. The BFS uses applications for Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to construct nationwide, industry-level and state-level time series for new business applications, as well as actual and projected employer business formations originating from these applications. Learn about the data, the evolution of the BFS program from its research beginnings, and new BFS research applications.
Alyson Plumb is the Economic Indicator Division’s Business Formation Statistics Team Lead at the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau. She earned a BS in Statistics from the University of Pittsburgh and started working at the Census Bureau in 2015. Her primary duties focus on publishing Business Formation Statistics (BFS) data on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis. Most recently, Alyson helped increase data frequency by transitioning the data product from a quarterly to a monthly release. Additionally, she assisted with adding more detail to BFS releases by adding industry classification information to the monthly releases and county geographical information as part of an annual release.