[Federal Register Volume 88, Number 208 (Monday, October 30, 2023)]
[Notices]
[Pages 74147-74149]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2023-23908]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Census Bureau
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment
Request; Annual Integrated Economic Survey
The Department of Commerce will submit the following information
collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for
review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of
1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite the
general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed, and
continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of
our information collection requirements and minimize the public's
reporting burden. Public comments were previously requested via the
Federal Register on November 21, 2022, during a 60-day comment period.
This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments.
Agency: U.S. Census Bureau, Department of Commerce.
Title: Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES).
OMB Control Number: 0607-1024.
Form Number(s): This electronic collection has no form number.
Type of Request: Regular submission, Revision of a currently
approved collection.
Number of Respondents: Dress Rehearsal--8,470 and 50 debriefing
interviews; Full AIES--384,940.
Average Hours per Response: Dress Rehearsal--3 hours and 55
minutes, Debriefing interviews--1 hour; Full AIES--3 hours and 23
minutes.
Burden Hours: Dress Rehearsal--33,206 hours, Debriefing
interviews--50 hours; Full AIES--1,300,535 hours.
Needs and Uses: On June 21, 2023, The Office of Management and
Budget granted approval of a Dress Rehearsal for the AIES, with the
stipulation that the Census Bureau will submit a revision request
documenting any changes to the forms or procedures prior to
implementing a full scale AIES. This revision request documents the
modifications that transpired between the U.S. Census Bureau obtaining
that OMB clearance and the present moment.
The U.S. Census Bureau requests Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) approval to conduct the Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES)
on an annual basis, beginning for survey year 2023 (collected in
calendar year 2024) and a preparatory Dress Rehearsal for the AIES for
survey year 2022 (collected in calendar year 2023). The AIES is a new
survey designed to integrate and replace seven existing annual business
surveys into one survey. The AIES will provide the only comprehensive
national and subnational data on business revenues, expenses, and
assets on an annual basis. The AIES is designed to combine Cenlong-
termu collections to reduce respondent burden, increase data quality,
and allow the Census Bureau to operate more efficiently to reduce long
term costs. The existing collections integrated into the AIES are the
Annual Retail Trade Survey (ARTS), Annual Wholesale Trade Survey
(AWTS), Service Annual Survey (SAS), Annual Survey of Manufactures
(ASM), Annual Capital Expenditures Survey (ACES), Manufacturers'
Unfilled Orders Survey (M3UFO), and the Report of Organization.
The AIES will collect the following information from employer
businesses in sample:
Business characteristics, including employment, operating
status, organizational change, ownership information, and co-op status.
Business classification, including business activity, type
of operation, and tax status.
Revenue, including sales, shipments, and receipts, revenue
by class of customer, taxes, contributions, gifts, and grants,
products, and e-commerce activity.
Operating expenses, including purchased services, payroll,
benefits, rental payments, utilities, interest, resales, equipment,
materials and supplies, research and development, and other detailed
operating expenses.
Assets, including capital expenditures, inventories, and
depreciable assets.
Robotic equipment expenditures and usage.
Additional topics of collections in the AIES include sources of
revenue and/or expense for providers (e.g., hospitals and other
businesses in the health industry) of select services such as inpatient
days, outpatient visits to hospitals, patient visits for other selected
health industries, revenue from telemedicine services, and expenses for
electronic health records. Product data will be collected from
businesses operating in manufacturing industries. Merchandise lines
data will be collected from businesses operating in select retail
industries. Detailed inventories will be collected for select
businesses operating in transportation services industries (e.g.,
trucks, truck tractors, and trailers).
The AIES may include new questions each year based on relevant
business topics. Potential topics for such new questions could include
technological advances, management and business practices, export
practices, and globalization. Any new questions will be submitted to
OMB for review using the appropriate clearance vehicle.
In September of 2023, the Census Bureau began conducting a Dress
Rehearsal for the AIES with approximately 8,470 companies. The Dress
Rehearsal will collect survey year 2022 information. The Dress
Rehearsal will be a large-scale test of the forms and procedures
planned for the AIES. The burden estimate is 3 hours and 55 minutes per
respondent. The Dress rehearsal will allow us to examine patterns of
non-response and to determine what additional support respondents will
need. Paradata gathered from respondents' interactions with the online
collection instrument during the Dress Rehearsal will help refine our
burden estimate. We will also compare the quality of responses received
to historical data collected in the 7 surveys the AIES will replace. Up
to 50, 1-hour debriefing interviews with respondents will also be
conducted.
To minimize the burden imposed on most respondents already in
sample for the seven annual surveys the AIES will replace, we will use
the AIES responses from companies that participate in the Dress
Rehearsal to satisfy their reporting requirement for the annual
survey(s) for
[[Page 74148]]
which they are in sample for the 2022 survey year. Given that the AIES
Dress Rehearsal will be conducted during the same calendar year as we
will be conducting the 2022 Economic Census, we may use the AIES Dress
Rehearsal to supplement Economic Census responses, pursuant to Title 13
U.S.C., Section 193.
After conclusion of the Dress Rehearsal, and based on refinements
made to forms and procedures, the Census Bureau will begin conducting
the full-scale AIES in 2024, collecting survey year 2023 information.
The target population of the AIES includes all domestic, private
sector, non-farm employer businesses in the United States (50 states
and the District of Columbia) as defined by the 2017 North American
Industry Classification System (NAICS). Exclusions are foreign
operations of U.S. businesses headquartered in the U.S. territories and
most government operations (including the U.S. Postal Service),
agricultural production companies and private households. Based on this
target population, the AIES will select a stratified sequential random
sample of approximately 384,940 companies from a frame of approximately
5.4 million companies constructed from the BR, which is the Census
Bureau's master business list. Businesses which reported business
activity on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax forms 941, ``Employer's
Quarterly Federal Tax Return''; 944, ``Employer's Annual Federal Tax
Return''; 1065 ``U.S. Return of Partnership Income''; or any one of the
1120 corporate tax forms will be eligible for selection.
The AIES will collect company, industry, and establishment
information for all sampled enterprises with one or more operating
locations in the United States and the District of Columbia (DC).
In an effort to provide a holistic company view and replace the
functions of the Report of Organization Survey with the AIES to
maintain and update the BR as a master list of businesses, the AIES
will also collect limited company, industry, and establishment
information for select enterprises with one or more operating locations
in associated offshore areas (referred to, collectively, as
``Stateside'') as well as in the U.S. territories of Puerto Rico, Guam,
the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin
Islands, and American Samoa (referred to, collectively, as ``Island
Areas''). In addition, any international locations of select
enterprises are included if they have U.S. employees.
The public administration sector (NAICS 92), agriculture production
activities (NAICS 111, 112), the postal service (NAICS 491), funds and
trusts (NAICS 525), offices of notaries (NAICS 54112), and private
households (NAICS 814) are considered to be out-of-scope to the AIES
program. Activities for establishments in these industries belonging to
sampled enterprises will also be collected. Enterprises that are
exclusively engaged in these industries will not be selected.
Non-employer businesses are also not within the scope of this new
AIES. The Census Bureau will submit a separate request for approval to
collect data from non-employer businesses, if it is determined that a
collection is needed to produce those estimates.
Respondents will receive an email and/or letter notifying them of
their requirement to respond and how to access the survey. Responses
will be due approximately 30 days from receipt. Select businesses will
receive a due date reminder via a letter or email prior to the due
date. Additionally, email follow-ups and up to three mail follow-ups to
nonrespondents will be conducted at approximately one-month intervals.
Selected nonrespondents will receive a priority class mailing for the
third follow-up if needed. Selected nonrespondents will also receive
follow-up telephone calls.
The AIES will replace the ARTS, AWTS, SAS, ASM, ACES, M3UFO, and
the Report of Organization for survey year 2023, at which time the
Census Bureau will officially sunset these programs. The ASM and the
Report of Organization completed their final year of data collection in
survey year 2021. ACES, ARTS, AWTS, SAS, and M3UFO will complete their
final year of data collection in survey year 2022.
Estimates currently published in ARTS, AWTS, SAS, ASM, and ACES
will be produced as part of the AIES and expanded to include
subnational data across the economy. Previously, the ASM
(manufacturing) was the only annual survey being integrated into the
AIES that produced subnational data. The AIES will produce subnational
data for manufacturing, retail, wholesale, and service sectors if
quality standards are met. The AIES information previously collected on
the Report of Organization will continue to be used to update the
Census Bureau's BR, and the AIES data previously collected on the M3UFO
will continue to be used for the Manufacturers' Shipments, Inventories,
and Orders (M3) Survey benchmarking purposes. Data users will be able
to access the AIES estimates through the use of visualizations, CSV
files, data.census.gov, and the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED),
which is an online database maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of
St. Louis.
Private businesses, organizations, industry analysts, educators and
students, and economic researchers have used the data and estimates
provided by the ARTS, AWTS, SAS, ASM, and ACES collections for
analyzing and conducting impact evaluations on past and current
economic performance, short-term economic forecasts, productivity,
long-term economic growth, market analysis, tax policy, capacity
utilization, business fixed capital stocks and capital formation,
domestic and international competitiveness trade policy, product
development, market research, and financial analysis. Trade and
professional organizations have used the estimates to analyze industry
trends and benchmark their own statistical programs, develop forecasts,
and evaluate regulatory requirements. Government program officials and
agencies have used the data for research, economic policy making, and
forecasting.
Based on the use of the data of the existing collections, estimates
produced from the AIES will serve as a benchmark for Census Bureau
indicator programs, such as the Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and
Food Services (MARTS), the Monthly Retail Trade Survey (MRTS),
Manufacturers' Shipments Inventories & Orders (M3), Monthly Wholesale
Trade Survey (MWTS), and the Quarterly Services Survey (QSS). Like the
previous collections, the AIES will provide updates to the Longitudinal
Research Database (LRD), and Census Bureau staff and academic
researchers with special sworn status will continue to use the LRD for
micro data analysis. The Census Bureau will also continue to use
information collected in the AIES to update and maintain the
centralized, multipurpose BR that provides sampling populations and
enumeration lists for the Census Bureau's economic surveys and
censuses.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) will continue to use the
estimates to derive industry output for the input-output accounts and
for the gross domestic product (GDP). The Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) will continue to use the data as input to its Producer Price
Index (PPI) and in developing productivity measurements; the Federal
Reserve Board (FRB) will continue to use the data to prepare the Index
of Industrial Production, to improve estimates of investment indicators
for monetary policy, and in monitoring retail credit lending; the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will continue to use
the data to estimate
[[Page 74149]]
expenditures for the National Health Accounts and for monitoring and
evaluating healthcare industries; and the Department of the Treasury
will continue to use the data to analyze depreciation and to research
economic trends.
Frequency: Annually.
Respondent's Obligation: Mandatory.
Legal Authority: The AIES collection is authorized by title 13
U.S.C. 131, 182, and 193. Response to the AIES is mandatory per
sections 224 and 225 of title 13, U.S.C.
This information collection request may be viewed at
www.reginfo.gov. Follow the instructions to view the Department of
Commerce collections currently under review by OMB.
Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information
collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of
this notice on the following website www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.
Find this particular information collection by selecting ``Currently
under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search
function and entering the title of the collection.
Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Under Secretary for
Economic Affairs, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2023-23908 Filed 10-27-23; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P