U.S. Census: Economic Census

Major survey currently conducted every five years by the U.S. Census Bureau, currently covering years ending in 2 and 7 (e.g., 1987, 1992, etc.). Until the mid-20th century, these surveys were part of the Decennial Censuses.

Economic censuses include the following (differs depending on year) and often have geographic area data (e.g., state or city):

• Agriculture
• Manufactures
• Government
• Retail trade
• Wholesale Trade
• Construction Industries
• Mineral Industries

Online Access

• Tables from the 2002 through 2017 surveys are fairly complete, with selected data from some earlier surveys.
• 1977-2007 PDFs of the reports (before 1992 these are just overviews, not the full reports). You can get to the 1992, 1997, and 2002 publications, plus scattered reports from other years, from a newer interface.
• 1977-present raw data Census FTP site with datasets in ASCII fixed length, CSV, DBF, and other formats

In the Government Documents Collection

• Paper: Several series of reports (see below) shelved in the Docs. Ref. Census section. For a good overview of the Economic Census, see History of the ... Economic Census [Call numbers/holdings]. The PDFs are also online from the Census Bureau (scroll to bottom).
• CD-ROM: [Call numbers/holdings]. Some data from 1992, 1997, and 2002 are available on CD-ROM.

The economic censuses have been handled differently over the years:

• Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these were part of the decennial censuses and will be found in the Dubester section of the Census Reference collection (see tab on aggregated data)
• Later economic census data was collected on a different schudule (not necessarily the years ending in "0") and the scheudle would change over time

Call number examples, for browsing paper volumes in the Documents Census Reference collection on Perkins floor 2:

• Agriculture: C 3.31 (most recent volumes use call number stem A 92 and 1969 data at C 56: )
• Manufactures: C 3.24:
• Government: C 3.140: - C3.145:
• Retail Trade: C 3.202:
• Mineral Industries: C 3.216:

Note: Censuses from 1950 have call number stem beginning C 3.950: and those published 1972-1975 have call number stem C 56.2XX: