新美国企业设立：激增还是停滞？

Federal Reserve Board, Washington, D.C.ISSN 1936-2854 (Print)ISSN 2767-3898 (Online) New U.S. Business Establishments: Surging or Stalling? Dan Cao, Henry Hyatt, Toshihiko Mukoyama, Erick Sager 2026-040 Please cite this paper as:Cao,Dan,Henry Hyatt,Toshihiko Mukoyama,and Erick Sager (2026).“New U.S.BusinessEstablishments:Surgingor Stalling?,”Finance and Economics DiscussionSeries2026-040.Washington:Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System,https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2026.040. NOTE: Staff working papers in the Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS) are preliminarymaterials circulated to stimulate discussion and critical comment.The analysis and conclusions set forthare those of the authors and do not indicate concurrence by other members of the research staff or theBoard of Governors. References in publications to the Finance and Economics Discussion Series (other thanacknowledgement) should be cleared with the author(s) to protect the tentative character of these papers. New U.S. Business Establishments: Surging or Stalling?* Dan Cao†Henry Hyatt‡Toshihiko Mukoyama§Erick Sager¶ June 2026 Abstract Since the 1990s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has reported much more rapid growth inU.S. private sector employer establishments than has the Census Bureau – the gap reached roughly1.6 million by 2023. Using linked BLS-Census microdata, we document two main drivers. First,a large and growing number of employers providing services to the elderly and persons with dis-abilities are in scope for the BLS frame but not the Census Bureau’s. Second, many firms appearwith substantially more establishments in the BLS frame. These discrepancies substantially affectthe measured establishment size distribution and quantitative policy analysis. JEL Codes: E24, J21, L11, O31 Keywords: establishments, multi-unit firms, concentration 1Introduction In recent decades, the U.S. economy has experienced the rapid rise of “mega firms” which operatemany business establishments. A growing literature seeks to understand the causes and consequencesof this phenomenon.For example, Cao et al. (2020), Aghion et al. (2023), and Hsieh and Rossi-Hansberg (2023) highlight the importance of technological changes that make it easier for firms toadd new branches, manage their establishment portfolios, and replicate low-cost technologies acrosstheir worksites. Moreover, recent studies show that the expansion of multi-establishment firms playsan important role in rising national market concentration and declining local market concentration(Rossi-Hansberg et al., 2021; Autor et al., 2023), declining labor share (Aghion et al., 2023), risingearnings inequality (Kleinman, 2023), and the transmission of local economic shocks (Giroud andMueller, 2019). There are two main administrative datasets that cover employer establishments in the U.S. Thefirst is the U.S. Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), which tracks employer es-tablishments that appear in its Business Register (BR), which in turn is derived from tax records,surveys, and other data sources. A second dataset is the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages(QCEW), which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) maintains in partnership with U.S. states, terri-tories, and the District of Columbia.1Each of these datasets is associated with published aggregates.The LBD is tabulated as the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS). The QCEW is published as tab-ulations with the same name and acronym, as well as through the Business Employment Dynamics(BDM). To use comparable definitions and scope, in this paper we consider the private sector onlyand exclude government employers. These two data sources disagree substantially about the number of employer business establish-ments in the U.S. In 2023, the most recent year for which both data series (referencing March) havebeen published, the BDM (QCEW) reported 9.2 million private sector employer establishments, whilethe BDS (LBD) reported only 7.5 million. This difference of about 1.6 million establishments stemsfrom a divergence between the series that began in the early 2000s. The difference in establishmentcounts between the Census and BLS business registers has been previously noted by Barnatchez et al.(2017) and Decker and Haltiwanger (2023).2 In this paper, we document these discrepancies, shed light on their sources, and consider theirconsequences. For the years 2004 to 2016, we can link the LBD with establishment-level QCEWmicrodata provided by all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia to the U.S. Census Bureau’sLongitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program. This unique linked data source al-lows us to explore the details of the disagreements between the two datasets. The divergence betweenthese two data sources arises from fundamental differences in how each statistical agency constructsits business frame. While the Census Bureau relies primarily on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) taxfilin