CREAT: Census Research Exploration and Analysis Tool

A Long View of Employment Growth and Firm Dynamics in the United States: Importers vs. Exporters vs. Non-Traders

December 2021

Working Paper Number:

CES-21-38

Abstract

The first experimental product from the U.S. Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) program -- BDS-Goods Traders -- provides annual, public-use measures of business dynamics by four mutually exclusive goods-trading classifications: exporter only, importer only, exporter and importer, and non-trader. The BDS-Goods Traders offers a comprehensive view of employment growth at firms associated with goods trading activities in the United States from 1992-2019. We highlight three patterns. First, employment is skewed towards goods traders in several ways. Only 6% of all U.S. firms are goods traders but they account for half of total employment. Moreover, 80% of large firms and 70% of older firms are goods traders. Second, exporter-importer firms represent 70% of manufacturing employment and over half of employment in services-producing industries (management, retail, transportation, utilities, and wholesale). Third, goods-traders exhibit higher net job creation rates than non-traders controlling for firm size, age, and sector. Goods traders contribution to total job creation grows over time, rising to more than half after 2008.

Document Tags and Keywords

Keywords Keywords are automatically generated using KeyBERT, a powerful and innovative keyword extraction tool that utilizes BERT embeddings to ensure high-quality and contextually relevant keywords.

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:
market, industrial, sale, enterprise, manufacturing, import, export, employed, recession, shipment, exporting, exporter, warehousing, wholesale, firms export, exported, trading, importer, trader

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:
Center for Economic Studies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Employer Identification Number, Longitudinal Business Database, Department of Homeland Security, North American Industry Classification System, Social Security Number, Longitudinal Firm Trade Transactions Database, Disclosure Review Board, World Trade Organization, Business Dynamics Statistics, Federal Statistical Research Data Center

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