Linking BEA Surveys of Foreign Direct Investment in the United

States with BLS Register and Survey Data: Twenty First Century 

Methods and Preliminary Findings 

Elizabeth Weber Handwerker 

Mina M. Kim 

Lowell G. Mason 

David M. Talan 

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 

2 Massachusetts Ave, NE Washington, DC 20212 

 The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions 

or policies of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics or the views of other staff members. We thank the Bureau of 

Economic Analysis for making this project possible, Dan Yorgason of the Bureau of Economic Analysis for his 

advice, and acknowledge the work of Erik Friesenhahn, Josie Auguste, Evan Gutentag, Alexa Carlson, Jack Cloud, 

Aaron Franz, and Erica Rice on this project 

Motivation 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes detailed estimates of employment and wages in the United States, 

based on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) Business Register. Meanwhile, the Bureau of 

Economic Analysis (BEA) collects information on foreign direct investment (FDI) to measure U.S. assets overseas 

and foreign ownership of U.S. operations. We have heard from potential users that linking these data to produce 

detailed employment estimates for U.S. parents of multinational companies and foreign-owned businesses in the 

United States would be useful to researchers and policymakers. Producing additional estimates from linked data 

leverages existing infrastructure, and does not add to respondent burden. 

The QCEW is a comprehensive source of data on U.S. establishments. At the establishment level, total employment 

and compensation data are collected, as well as the industrial classification and geographic location of each 

establishment. Linking BEA data to the QCEW also allows for linking to other BLS surveys, because the QCEW 

serves as the frame for BLS surveys of employers. For example, the QCEW is the sampling frame for the large 

Occupational Employment Survey (OES), which collects detailed measures of employment by occupation at the

establishment level. Thus, linking BEA data to the QCEW allows for direct estimates of employment and 

compensation by detailed levels of geography and industry, as well as indirect sample-based estimates of

employment by occupation via other BLS surveys. 

A collaboration between BLS and BEA in the early 1990s produced tabulations on “Employment And Wages In 

Foreign-Owned Businesses In The United States” for 1989, 1990, and 1991 data, as well as tabulations of

“Occupations In Foreign-Owned Manufacturing Establishments In The United States” for 1989 data. The current 

collaboration has produced a pilot analysis of the domestic employment in the largest US-based multinational 

manufacturing companies in 2004 data, and work is ongoing to link BEA data on foreign-owned businesses in 2012 

and 2013. However, this data linking work will be most valuable when the data has been linked for multiple years, 

allowing observations of changes over time in foreign investments and employment patterns. 

With single years of data, we can examine differences in employment, wages, and occupational structure between 

US employers that are foreign-owned and those that are domestically owned (or between those that have overseas 

affiliates and those that do not). We can also examine patterns by the country of foreign owner (or country of 

foreign affiliates). With multiple years of data, we will be able to examine the relationships between employment 

dynamics and changes in investment by foreign firms in US firms, or by US firms in overseas affiliates. We will 

also be able to identify which geographic areas of the US have had employment most affected by inward or outward 

foreign direct investments, and which occupations are most affected by inward or outward foreign direct 

investments. 
We have heard from potential data users that local governments are interested in learning about the country 

distribution of foreign interests that invest in their regions, at greater geographic detail than the state-level 

information collected by BEA. The SelectUSA initiative in 2011 established an office in the Commerce Department 

to attract and retain international investment in the United States. We have spoken with staff members of this office 

who have expressed an interest in the sort of linked data that this project could produce as a helpful tool in their 

work. 

The central challenge of linking BLS employment data with BEA survey data is that BEA collects information on 

foreign direct investment (FDI) through mandatory surveys at the enterprise level, while BLS collects the QCEW 

data at the Unemployment Insurance Account level. Although both datasets contain Employer Identification 

Numbers (EINs) used for tax purposes, large employers may have many EINs, and may use different EINs in 

reporting to BEA surveys than they use in reporting to the Unemployment Insurance systems whose data are 

compiled into BLS’ QCEW. 

This paper lays out the conceptual framework for developing indicators of employment and wages related to FDI by 

linking survey micro-data from BEA with BLS business register micro-data. This paper describes the methodology 

for generating these measures, the linking process and results, as well as some of the challenges and caveats 

associated with this approach. The paper then presents preliminary results and opportunities for future work. 

Section I: The QCEW Business Register 

The QCEW Business Register is a list of active employer business establishments in the United States, Washington 

DC, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Its principal sources of information are the mandatory quarterly reports 

filed by all employers covered by the Unemployment Insurance system of the fifty States, the District of Columbia, 

Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Employers report to their State Workforce Agencies (SWA’s) in compliance 

with State Unemployment Insurance (UI) laws, and for Federal civilian workers, in compliance with the 

Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employee (UCFE) program. Each quarter, business and government 

employers report monthly employment and quarterly wages. 

As of the fourth quarter of 2014, there are 9.4 million worksites with 139 million employees reported in the QCEW. 

Sources of data for the QCEW: 

 Status Determination Forms. All new employers subject to UI coverage must file a Status Determination 

Form with their State Employment Security Agency (SESA). This form includes basic identification 

information, including business name, mailing and physical location address, type of organization, Federal 

Employer Identification Number (EIN), and more. The Status Determination Form also requests 

information to identify the establishment’s industrial activity (NAICS) code, county code (or township in 

the New England area), and the ownership code (private sector, or Federal, State or local government). The 

assignment of the industry code is based on the establishment’s primary economic activity, which is 

determined by its principal product or group of products produced or distributed, or services rendered. 

Inclusion of EINs on this form is due to the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA). This law affects 

payments of unemployment compensation to workers who have lost their jobs. Most employers pay both a 

federal and a state unemployment tax. FUTA provides a substantial offset for federal taxes for employers 

that pay into State UI taxes. Thus, employers have a tremendous incentive to report the same EINs to both

State and federal systems. Because the employer pays the FUTA tax; the EIN can be matched between the 

IRS and the state to verify that these payments have been made.

 Quarterly Contribution Report (QCR). All liable employers are required to file a QCR with the SESAs 

for their UI accounts. These reports, like the Status Determination Forms, are administered by the UI 

program. All of the QCR forms request employment values for each month of the quarter and total wages, 

taxable wages, and UI taxes due for the quarter. This information and the taxes that are due are necessary 

for the operation of the UI tax system, but they are also an important source of statistical data. Employers 

are asked to report, among other items, the total number of covered workers (full and part-time) who earned 

wages (subject to UI taxes) during the pay period(s) which includes the 12th of each month in the quarter

and the total payroll for the quarter. This is the official OMB definition of employment. This report is 

mandatory for employers with a single location as well as employers with multiple locations in the State. 
The latter group of employers reports a summary of these data for all of their establishments covered under 

the same State UI account on the QCR. 

 Multiple Worksite Reports (MWRs). Approximately 7.5 million worksites were reported as single 

establishment employers. Employment and wages data and other business identification information for the 

remaining 1.9 million worksites were collected from quarterly Multiple Worksite Reports (MWRs). The 

MWR employers represent about 1.4% of total employers, but they constitute 17% of the total number of 

worksites and a stunning 41% of the Nation’s employment. Information on the MWR form is used to more 

accurately classify employment and wage data of multiple establishment employers by industry and by 

location within states. The MWR is mandatory in 26 states and compliance in the voluntary states is also 

very high. The EIN provides linkages among establishments of the same business enterprise across States.

Also collected are the physical location address of each worksite, a worksite description (normally a store 

or unit number or other information meaningful to the employer), and various other business identification 

information. This more comprehensive disaggregation of multi-establishment accounts is available in the

QCEW Business Register which is almost entirely at the establishment level and thus provides more 

accurate industrial and geographic information for all establishments. 

 Annual Refiling Survey (ARS). The purpose of the BLS Annual Refiling Survey is to review and, if 

necessary, update the classification codes (industrial, geographical, and ownership) currently assigned to 

the establishments stored on the QCEW Business Register. The survey covers approximately one-third of 

the establishments in the QCEW Business Register which are reviewed annually. Due to budget limitations, 

establishments with zero to three employees are excluded. In addition to the industrial classification review, 

the respondent is also requested to review and update information for the business establishment’s 1) 

physical location address; 2) mailing address; and, 3) county, township, island, or parish in which the

establishment is located. 

Data collected on the QCR, MWR, and RFEW are edited by the SESA staff and corrected, as necessary. There are 

150 separate edits designed to detect a wide range of invalid and inconsistent values. These edits have been refined 

and enhanced over time reflecting the many years of data editing experience of state, regional and national office 

staff. In order to assure accurate linkages between new and existing establishments, there are two components of 

QCEW Business Register matching process: automated matching and analyst matching. The computer automated 

matching links approximately 97 percent of all establishments each quarter through a process which links State 

Employment Security Agencies' identification numbers (SESA-ID). Every time a link is made, an identifier is 

assigned to the link to distinguish which type of match was made such as a breakout or consolidation. 

An example of the data available from the QCEW is the following table of employment in large US counties from 

the September 17, 2015 press release (available at http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cewqtr.nr0.htm): 

Table A. Large counties ranked by March 2015 employment, March 2014-15 employment increase, and March 

2014-15 percent increase in employment 

Employment in large counties

March 2015 employment 

(thousands)

Increase in employment, 

March 2014-15

(thousands)

Percent increase in 

employment, 

March 2014-15

United States 37,412.4 United States 2,872.7 United States 2.1

 

Los Angeles, Calif. 4,204.3 Los Angeles, CA 86.4 Utah, Utah 6.7

Cook, Ill. 2,470.3 Harris, Texas 66.6 Adams, Colo. 5.8

New York, N.Y. 2,346.5 New York, N.Y. 60.5 Denton, Texas 5.8

Harris, Texas 2,288.8 Dallas, Texas 56.6 Montgomery, TX 5.8

Maricopa, Ariz. 1,803.5 Maricopa, Ariz. 52.0 Lee, Fla. 5.7

Dallas, Texas 1,570.9 King, Wash. 42.5 Chatham, Ga. 5.3

Orange, Calif. 1,501.2 Santa Clara, CA 38.5 Calcasieu, La. 5.3

San Diego, Calif. 1,352.1 Clark, Nev. 37.0 Clay, Mo. 5.3

King, Wash. 1,254.9 Orange, Calif. 36.4 Weld, Colo. 5.2
Miami-Dade, Fla. 1,074.6 Cook, Ill. 36.1 Collier, Fla. 5.2

 Williamson, TN 5.2

Section II: BEA data on Foreign Direct Investment 

The Bureau of Economic Analysis conducts surveys of both U.S. Direct Investment Abroad and Foreign Direct 

Investment in the United States. Preliminary efforts to match selected data from surveys of U.S. Direct Investment 

Abroad with BLS data are described in Handwerker, Kim, and Mason (2012). This paper focuses on efforts to 

match the complete data from BEA’s 2012 Benchmark Survey of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States1

with the QCEW. 

BEA’s 2012 Benchmark Survey of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States collects mandatory reports from 

all U.S. business enterprises (from here on referred to as affiliates) in which there is foreign direct investment by an 

entity (e.g. an individual, corporation, estate, trust, or government) that has at least a 10 percent controlling interest 

in the affiliate. Such benchmark surveys take place every five years; in the intervening years, larger businesses must 

make similar reports, but data from smaller businesses are imputed. The reports capture a comprehensive set of 

data, including: 

 Balance sheet details, such as total assets, liabilities, and owner’s equity 

 Value added 

 Employment and employee compensation 

 Sales and net income 

 Expenditures and trade in goods 

 Expenditures in research and development 

For the purposes of linking the BEA FDI dataset with QCEW establishment data, affiliate employment totals

provide a target to measure how successfully establishments were matched to their parent affiliates. BEA 

employment represents the number of full and part-time employees on the affiliate’s payroll at the end of the fiscal 

year. The BEA definition of employment is similar but not identical to the BLS. We use the same reference month 

when comparing BEA affiliate employment and the sum of employment for all matching QCEW establishments: as 

BEA affiliate employment is generally given at the end of each affiliate’s fiscal year, we compare this employment 

level to employment during the same time period for the matched QCEW establishments. 

For this matching project, BLS is focusing on the US affiliates of foreign-owned multinationals in 2012 for which 

there is non-zero employment. These are the group of affiliates for which establishment matches are attempted. As 

reported in the preliminary tabulations, average employment of these affiliates is 688.50 (standard deviation is 

4,627.01). There is considerable variation among affiliate employment (Table 1). 35.82% of all affiliates are quite 

small, employing less than 10 employees; they account for less than 0.18% of total employment for the affiliates 

with positive employment. Affiliates with 2,500 or more employees, on the other hand, account for 75.82% of total 

employment.

Table 1: Size distribution of US affiliates of foreign-owned enterprises 

Total number of employees Percent of affiliates Percent of employment 

1 – 9 35.82% 0.18% 

10 – 19 9.87% 0.20% 

20 – 99 22.78% 1.61% 

100 – 249 10.33% 2.40% 

250 – 999 12.32% 9.20% 

1000 – 2499 4.50% 10.61% 

2500+ 4.38% 75.82% 

 

1

 A detailed description of the data is available in the BEA publication “Foreign Direct Investment in the United 

States (FDIUS): Preliminary 2012 Data,” found at http://www.bea.gov/international/fdius2012_preliminary.htm. 

Revised statistics will be released in mid-November 2015. A more thorough introduction to these data is given in 

Mataloni (1995), available online at http://bea.gov/scb/pdf/internat/usinvest/1995/0395iid.pdf 
Country Group of Affiliate Owners 

Tables 2 shows the 3 top country groups of “Ultimate Beneficial Owners (UBO)” for affiliates with positive 

employment that are eligible to be matched both in terms of the number of affiliates as well as total employment. As 

shown in Table 2, Europe accounts for the largest percentage of foreign-owned US affiliates, both in terms of 

number of affiliates (44.28%) and total employment (63.48%). On average, US affiliates whose ultimate beneficial 

ownership are European enterprises are far larger than those of other country groups 987.21 employees per affiliate 

as compared to 688.50 for all affiliates). Asia and Pacific owned affiliates account for the next highest percentages 

(31.13% of affiliates, but only 17.44% of total employment given smaller average affiliate size of 385.79

employees) followed by Canada (13.03% of affiliates, 11.94% of total employment). 

Table 2: Top 3 groups of counties of UBO in terms of percent of affiliates of foreign-owned enterprises and 

percent of employment 

Country 

Group Ranking Percent of affiliates Percent of employment Average number of employees 

(Standard deviation) 

Europe 1 44.28% 63.48% 987.21 

(6,126.76) 

Asia and 

Pacific 2 31.13% 17.44% 385.79 

(1,930.61) 

Canada 3 13.03% 11.94% 631.07 

(4,734.33) 

Industry of Affiliate 

Table 3 shows the top 4 industry groups both in terms of the number of affiliates and in terms of total affiliate 

employment. In terms of the number of affiliates, the top 4 industry groups represent 74.01% of all affiliates. In 

terms of total employment, the top 4 industry groups represent 64.61% of all affiliate employment. Three sectors are 

included in both lists: Manufacturing (1st in terms of the number of affiliates and in terms of total employment); 

Wholesale trade (2nd in terms of the number of affiliates, 3

rd in terms of total employment; and Financial activities 

(3rd in terms of number of affiliates, 4th in terms of total employment). Professional, scientific, and technical services 

is 4th in terms of the number of affiliates but is not in the top 4 in terms of total affiliate employment, where it is 

replaced by Retail trade in 2nd.

Table 3: Top 4 industry groups in terms of percent of affiliates of foreign-owned enterprises and 

percent of employment 

Ranking 

Ranking based upon: 

Percent of total number of affiliates Percent of employment 

Industry Percent Industry Percent 

1 Manufacturing 28.82% Manufacturing 36.86% 

2 Wholesale trade 21.72% Retail trade 10.74% 

3 Financial activities 13.27% Wholesale trade 9.17% 

4 Professional, scientific, and 

technical services 10.20% Financial activities 7.83% 

Geographic Distribution of Affiliate Employment 

Finally, while BEA inward FDI data are reported at the enterprise level, affiliates are required to break out their 

employment by state in which their employees are employed. Table 4 shows the top 10 states in terms of the percent 

of total affiliate employment as collected by BEA. The top 10 states contain 55.23% of all affiliate employment by 

state. Table 4 also compares the percent of total affiliate employment to the percent of all QCEW establishment 

employment within the same 10 states. Compared to all QCEW establishment employment, affiliate employment is 

more highly concentrated in New York and New Jersey, and less concentrated in California and Florida. 
Table 4: Top 10 states in terms of percent of total employment 

State 

US affiliate 

employment 

QCEW establishment 

employment 

Percent 

difference 

Ranking Percent Ranking Percent 

California 1 10.42% 1 11.28% -0.85% 

Texas 2 8.13% 2 8.08% 0.05% 

New York 3 7.73% 3 6.46% 1.27% 

Pennsylvania 4 4.84% 6 4.21% 0.63% 

Illinois 5 4.54% 5 4.25% 0.29% 

Florida 6 4.14% 4 5.60% -1.46% 

New Jersey 7 4.08% 11 2.85% 1.23% 

Ohio 8 4.03% 7 3.79% 0.24% 

Michigan 9 3.79% 8 2.96% 0.84% 

North Carolina 10 3.52% 9 2.94% 0.58% 

US Affiliates with Zero Employment 

Finally, Table 5 shows the top 3 industry groups (4-digit NAICS) for the affiliates that report zero employment. 

These 3 industry groups account of 61.40% of affiliates that report zero employment. 

Table 5: The top 3 NAICS industry groups for US affiliates of foreign-owned 

enterprises with non-employment 

Industry group (4-digit NAICS) Percent of total affiliates 

Real estate 54.01% 

Holding companies, except bank holding companies 3.97% 

Other financial investment activities and exchanges 3.42% 

Section III: Matching process 

As noted in Handwerker and Mason (2013), EINs define business enterprises for tax purposes and are useful for 

linking establishments with their parents firms. While Elvery, Foster, Krizan, and Talan (2006) noted that most 

employers have just one EIN, EINs do not uniquely identify all firm; some firms may be comprised of multiple 

EINs. Handwerker and Mason (2013), for instance, show some evidence that some firms may use different EINs in 

different states. Additionally, firms involved in mergers and acquisitions have at least two EINs—at least one 

associated with the acquired firm and at least one associated with the acquiring firm. For those firms that have 

multiple EINs, a more fundamental problem is the EINs used in filing UI (the source of the QCEW) needn’t be the 

same EINs used in filing for other purposes, such as BEA mandated reports. For example, Handwerker and Mason 

(2013) show that EINs listed in SEC filings do not always appear in the QCEW. 

Every establishment in the QCEW is associated with one EIN and each US affiliate for which establishments are to 

be linked has at least one EIN associated with it and often a listing of EINs are provided (for any enterprises that are 

consolidated within the report in which there is a 50% of greater ownership). Thus, the fundamental challenge in 

finding all of the establishments in the QCEW that comprise the US affiliates of foreign-owned multinational 

enterprises is that of finding all of the establishment EINs for each affiliate. It is then a trivial step to combine the 

two data sources. This is done in a two-step process, first by automatically matching the EINs reported by each 

affiliates to all of the EINs in the QCEW, and second by manually reviewing these matches to remove mistakenly 

matched EINs and adding additional EINs that were not automatically matched. 
Automated matching 

The first step is automated. All of the reported BEA EINs are matched to those in the QCEW, and BEA reported 

affiliate employment is compared to that derived by summing employment for all of the QCEW establishments with 

matching EINs. This step is insufficient, as seen by assessing a simple metric that groups together matches that are 

“close” in terms of BEA and BLS employment; specifically, if derived BLS employment is within 20% of reported 

BEA affiliate employment. Only 39.59% of affiliates are considered to have “close” matches to the QCEW after 

automated matching, although these affiliates with “close” matches have 55.78% of all affiliate employment. 

Furthermore, not all of the automated matches are made correctly. Sometimes there are errors in EINs, and so the 

matched establishments in the QCEW do not actually belong to the affiliate. The “closeness” of the match is not 

always a good indicator for this kind of problem, and so every affiliate requires analyst review. 

Analyst matching 

After automated matching, a second, much more time-intensive manual matching step is undertaken. In this step, 

analysts are assigned affiliates to review the automated matches. Assignments are made based on the quality of the 

automated match and the size of the affiliate: poorly matched, large affiliates are assigned first. An additional 

consideration is whether an affiliate is overmatched (BLS employment is greater than BEA) or under-matched (BEA 

employment is greater than BLS). This approach seeks to maximize the effectiveness of limited analyst resources. 

Reviewing the automated matches is time-consuming, and affiliates that are undermatched in the automated step are 

much more time consuming for analysts to review than affiliates that are overmatched in the automated step. In 

cases assigned thus far, review takes 11.8 minutes on average for overmatched affiliates (with a standard error of 1.1 

minutes) and 20.9 minutes on average for undermatched affiliates (with a standard error of 0.5 minutes). This is 

because it takes longer to find additional information about an affiliate, such as additional brand or trade names or 

plant locations, than it does to discern that some of the QCEW establishments matched automatically are incorrectly 

matched. The amount of time analysts spend reviewing matches also increases by the size of the affiliate: on 

average there is a 0.7 minute increase (with a standard error of 0.1) per 1,000 employees. 

To facilitate the review, for each assignment the analyst is provided with measures of the quality of the automated 

match as well as information on the assigned affiliate and its matched establishments. The quality of the automated 

match is determined by the difference in affiliate employment and the sum of employment for the matched QCEW 

establishments. Affiliate information includes the affiliate name as well as any provided names of its consolidated 

subsidiaries, the address of the affiliate, the industry classification of the affiliate, a list of states in which it has 

employees, and a list of the matching EINs and matching establishments. For each matched establishment, in 

addition to the EIN associated with the establishment, the establishment’s industry classification, establishment 

names and address data, and employment are also given. 

The approach the analyst takes in reviewing the match depends in large part on whether the automated match is 

overmatched or undermatched. Overmatched affiliates are less time-consuming in part because all of the information 

necessary to determine invalidly matched establishments for the affiliate are already present. This is accomplished 

by comparing names, addresses, and industry classifications for the affiliate to those of the matched establishments. 

It is sometimes necessary to independently review outside resources via a web-search, the affiliate’s website, any 

SEC 10-k filings made by the affiliate, or other resources such as Wikipedia or Bloomberg among many others. For 

undermatched affiliates, it is necessary to search for additional EINs via name or address matching (where additional 

names and addresses are determined via web-search or through reviewing SEC 10-k filings). 

By removing mismatched EINs and adding any EINs that were not matched, differences in BEA-provided affiliate 

employment and the sum of QCEW establishment can generally be reconciled. If extensive review of the affiliate 

shows the matched establishments to be correct and complete and BEA affiliate employment and derived QCEW 

establishment employment are close, the analyst signs off on the affiliate as being complete. It is sometimes the 

case, however, that despite extensive analyst review, it is not possible to reconcile BEA affiliate employment and 

derived employment for the matched QCEW establishments. In this case, the affiliate is recorded and sent to BEA 

for review. Aside from mismatched EINs, another potential reason for discrepancy is when the affiliate contracts 

with a Professional Employment Organization (PEO) for all or part of its workforce. If the affiliate includes these 

employees as part of their total employment reported to BEA, it is not usually possible to match these employees in 

the QCEW establishment data. PEOs generally group together employees from multiple employers’ establishments 

under one EIN. 
Section IV: Quality of Matches 

Table 6 shows the number of EINs for each affiliate at three points in the matching process. Mentioned previously 

were the number of EINs that BEA provided for the affiliates that are being linked to establishments: 3.2 EINs on 

average (with a standard deviation of 14.7). Of these affiliates and their EINs provided, only 64.7% of the affiliates 

had a matching EIN in the QCEW after the automated matching procedures were run.2 On average, 1.9 (with a 

standard deviation of 3.7) of the EINs provided by BEA were found in the QCEW. Finally, to date 68% of the 

affiliates have been assigned to analysts to be reviewed. For the most part, the BEA-provided EINs that are in the 

QCEW are correct: only 0.1 (with a standard deviation of 0.4) of the BEA-provided EINs per affiliate are removed 

by the analyst. However, the EINs provided by BEA and in the QCEW are not complete. 0.9 (with a standard 

deviation of 4.2) EINs on average are added by analysts. After removing mismatched EINs and adding EINs that 

were not accounted for by the automated matching procedures, there are 2.6 (with a standard deviation of 5.9) EINs 

on average. 

Table 6: Mean number of EINs 

Point in matching process Percent of 

affiliates 

Mean number of EINs 

(Standard deviation) 

Mean number of 

removed EINS 

(Standard 

deviation) 

Mean number 

of added EINS 

(Standard 

deviation) 

Before automated matching: BEA 

provided data 100.0% 3.2 NA NA (14.7) 

After automated matching: BLS 

matched data 64.7% 1.9 NA NA (3.7) 

After analyst review (as of 

2/26/16): BLS matched data 68.0% 2.6 0.1 0.9 (5.9) (0.4) (4.2) 

Focusing our analyst review on the largest affiliates has greatly improved the quality of matches. Table 7 provides a 

summary of match quality after automated matching and after a great deal of analyst review had been completed. In 

this table, we classify matches by whether the BEA affiliate employment is within 20% of the sum of QCEW 

establishment employment, and also by whether the BEA affiliate employment is greater or less than the sum of 

QCEW establishment employment. As is clear from the table, automated matching alone is insufficient, with only 

39.6% of affiliates and 55.8% of employment being “close” matches (those that are not “close” matches are 

overwhelmingly affiliates with less than 100 employees reported to BEA). After reviewing 68% of the affiliates, 

most of which were large, the number of “closely” matched affiliates increased by only 8.9 percentage points, but 

total employment in affiliates that were considered “closely” matched increased to 80.3%. Much work was devoted 

to finding additional establishments in the QCEW for those affiliates that were initially “undermatched.” Our 

matching efforts continue, now focusing on much smaller affiliates. We expect to finish this work soon. 

Table 7: BEA and BLS employment for the matched affiliates 

Time of match 

Percent within 20% of 

BEA employment 

(“close”) 

Percent in which total QCEW 

employment < employment reported to 

BEA (“undermatched”) 

Affiliates Employment Affiliates Employment 

After automated matching 39.6% 55.8% 64.0% 77.6% 

After analyst review (as of 2/26/16) 48.5% 80.3% 60.0% 64.9% 

Section V: Opportunities for future work 

We continue to investigate ways to improve our matching methods and processes, including automating some of our 

internet searching, and seeking out additional commercial databases that could aid our analysts. We anticipate that 

 

2

 There are a substantial number of foreign-owned affiliates without any reported employment (with industry 

characteristics described in Table 5). We match these affiliates to the QCEW even when we do not expect to find 

any employment matches, and they are included in this table. 
our analysts will have completed a full review of the 2012 BEA FDI data soon, and we are working with BEA to 

plan publication tables of employment in foreign-owned establishment in the United States, focusing on the 

geographic detail available in the QCEW and the occupational detail available by matching to OES data. 

We are also interested in leveraging the work done in matching data for 2012 to match datasets for other years. We 

have also begun to match a sample of the 2013 BEA FDI data in order to develop cost estimates for repeated 

matches of the FDI data. Determining the establishments that comprise the US affiliates of foreign-owned 

enterprises in 2012 is a very time-intensive process. However, there are efficiencies in matching establishments for 

the same enterprises in different years. Most affiliates have very similar establishment composition from year to 

year and so much less analyst time is required for continuing affiliates. Furthermore, we are also interested in 

returning to matching work between BLS employment data and BEA surveys of the U.S. parents of multinational 

enterprises. 

The central task of this matching work is linking the EINs that enterprises report to BEA or the SEC to the EINs that 

these companies use in reports of their employment to the state-level Unemployment Insurance systems, which are 

compiled into the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. There are many other uses at BLS for such 

enterprise-EIN links, including links to other enterprise-level data, publication of data by enterprise size, 

coordination of surveys across enterprises, and enterprise-level disclosure review. We are working with BEA to 

prepare a new Memorandum of Understanding that would, if approved, allow us to merge the enterprise-EIN links 

found in this project with other sources of enterprise-EIN links at BLS, to leverage the work of this project in as 

many ways as possible. 

References 

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perspective,” Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of Establishment Surveys: International Conference of 

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