The U.S. Census Bureau on Nov. 12 applied its annual update to the Business Formation Statistics, the bureau said.
According to the bureau, the update revised underlying industry codes, known as NAICS codes, for the previous five years where more accurate detail was available from administrative sources. The bureau said it also recomputed and applied seasonal factors, which resulted in revisions to seasonally adjusted series. In addition, the bureau updated the formation series, which track firm births, using information from the Business Dynamic Statistics program.
The bureau noted a methodology change that took effect with the January 2026 monthly release. Applications associated with internet sales are now excluded from the high‑propensity application series and the corporation application series. The bureau said the high‑propensity and corporation definitions were updated for the entire time series as part of its periodic evaluation of characteristics linked to applications that are more likely to become business formations.
The bureau also said that a scheduled outage of the Internal Revenue Service’s online Employer Identification Number Assistant from Dec. 30, 2025 to Jan. 5, 2026 affected Business Formation Statistics data for December 2025 and for Week 53 of 2025. Earlier this year, the bureau released Annual Business Applications by County on June 10, 2026, weekly applications with industry detail on March 11, 2026, and Annual Island Areas Business Applications on March 11, 2026.