Census Bureau to Add New Questions about COVID-19 to Business Surveys

Posted: 4/17/2020 (Demography News)

For those of you with interests in researching the economic impacts of COVID-19, you may be interested to know that the Census Bureau was granted authority from the Office of Management and Budget to add COVID-19 questions to its business surveys. The posting of this authorization is here. Questions to measure the impact of the pandemic will be added to five surveys: the Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories & Orders (M3) Survey; the Building Permits Survey; the Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey; the Monthly Retail Surveys; and the Quarterly Services Survey. The Census Bureau will be asking businesses whether they have temporarily closed any locations for at least one day, whether they experienced delays in their supply chains or product shipments, and whether those delays impacted revenue. In addition, the Building Permits Survey will ask permit offices whether they were unable to issue permits due to COVID-19-related disruptions, whether such disruptions created a permit backlog, and whether backlogs were cleared. In its justification to OMB, the Census Bureau said: “The added questions are designed to allow us to measure the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic upon businesses.