Census forms are even exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. No business competitors can obtain the responses of another company. Most businesses with five or more paid employees, and a sample of smaller ones, will receive a census form. In many industries, businesses with many locations can report electronically using spreadsheet-like questionnaires on diskette. To reduce the burden on American businesses, the Census Bureau does not send Economic Census forms to most very small firms.
Forms go to all mid-sized and large businesses, but only to a sample of the smallest.
If a company has more than one location, all forms are sent to the company headquarters. If the headquarters has all the required figures, managers at individual offices may never see a census form. This new structure for classifying business activity identifies dozens of industries never before singled out in census data. We ask businesses to report data on their activity during calendar years 1997. That's why we wait until the start of 1998 to collect the data.