I would like a list containing the number of US companies grouped into
the following categories (real or nominal dollars are ok -- just
specify which), for years 2002-present:
$10 billion+ annual revenue
$5-10bn
$3-5bn
$1-3bn
$.5-1bn
$.25-.5bn
$.1-.25bn
<$.1bn
If the data is available, but pre-aggregated to somewhat different
categories (2-4 instead of 1-3), I'd like to know what the categories
are before I decide whether I want them.
I have 1997 and 2002 data for <$.1bn (probably the hardest category to
come by) from a publicly available document us_rec_mi.pdf. If I could
get this same type of data for after 2002 that would be great. |
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
17 Nov 2006 15:27 PST
questioner0-ga,
Interesting question, but as you are no doubt aware, it is
surprisingly difficult to get good information of the sort you are
seeking.
The us_rec_mi.pdf document is based on Economic Census data which is
only collected once every five years -- hence, the 1997 and 2002
datasets. There will not be comparable data until the 2007 Census,
and this won't be publicly available until several years after the
data collection occurs.
The Census Bureau also conducts an annual survey of businesses (less
comprehensive than a full census) and has some data that is as recent
as 2004. However, the groupings are not by revenue. Instead, they
are grouped by number of employees. For instance, for 2004 there were
7.39 million businesses in the US, broken out as follows:
1-4 employees -- 4,019,456 businesses
5-9 -- 1,406,299
10-19 -- 933,710
20-49 -- 637,629
50-99 -- 218,692
100-249 -- 122,345
250-499 -- 31,265
500-999 -- 11,501
1000 or more -- 6,827
Data like these are available from 1998 through 2004.
======================================
The IRS also provides some data on companies based on income tax
filings, but their categories only go up to (believe it or not!) a
million dollars, so that all companies with incomes above that amount
are lumped together. How pitiful is that?
HOWEVER, they also provide counts of companies divided by size of
total assets, and these data are broken into the following categories:
$10 million to under $25 million
$25 million to under $50 million
$10 million to under $25 million
$50 million to under $100 million
$100 million to under $250 million
$250 million to under $500 million
$500 million to under $2.5 billion
over $2.5 billion
Those data only go through 2003, though there may be 2004 data lurking
around as well.
All this is a long-winded way of asking: Would any of these data sets
be a useful alternative in terms of answering your question?
Given the absence of updated Census information, and the lack of
availability of this sort of information from other sources, the
Survey or IRS data just described may be your best bets.
I'll continue looking for other alternatives, but in the mean time, it
would be helpful to know your thoughts on all this.
Thanks,
pafalafa-ga
|
Clarification of Question by
questioner0-ga
on
18 Nov 2006 17:46 PST
I have had considerably less trouble getting companies by
payroll/number of employees, but unfortunately that's not what I'm
after. I'll have to think about assets instead of revenue, but let's
hold off on that for now.
There are services like Hoovers that allow you to sort companies by
revenue/etc but their database is far from comprehensive and from
speaking to them it appeared that there wasn't a revenue cutoff point
above which they would be willing to guarantee to me that every
company with those revenues would be included in the database.
I guess what I would be looking for at this point is a statistically
robust sample and estimates of the size of these segments based on it,
but perhaps there aren't any off-the-shelf ones out there.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
pafalafa-ga
on
18 Nov 2006 17:53 PST
I thought of Hoovers, Dun and Bradstreet, etc, but the problem there
is that you seem to be looking for data that you can compare to the
1997 and 2002 data...is that correct?
The commercial databases have such different criteria for what they
count, and how they count it, that you would not be able to make a
meaningful comparison between their data and Census data.
Let me know if I'm missing the mark here.
paf
PS -- I'm sure you already know that for the really large companies,
there's always the Fortune 500/1000 lists that can give you good,
consistent comparisons across years.
|
Clarification of Question by
questioner0-ga
on
19 Nov 2006 20:30 PST
If I could get a robust sample from Hoovers or elsewhere, I might be
willing to to take it instead of the census data (since they can't be
easily compared). F500/1000 only goes down to about $4BN and $1.4BN/yr
respectively, and I'm similarly concerned that data found elsewhere
for smaller companies wouldn't be comparable.
It's obviously unreasonable to commission the kind of sampling I would
like from Hoovers or whoever for Google Answers prices, so at this
point I think I'm just interested in any smart historical estimates
that people have came up with based on solid sampling, if there are
any in the public domain. If not, I hope to get back to you by this
Monday on whether or not the asset (as opposed to revenue) data will
do the job. Thanks.
|
Request for Question Clarification by
vercingatorix-ga
on
29 Nov 2006 07:59 PST
I can get you numbers for the following cut-off points:
$10 billion +
$5 billion $9.99 billion
$2.5 billion to $4.99 billion
$1 billion to $2.49 billion
$500 million to $999 million
$250 million to $499 million
$100 million to $249 million
Less than $100 million
If this suits you, I'll answer the question.
V
|
