Industry / DOCUMENTED CSV

2023 County & Industry Business Reference

Compare local employer-business activity by county and detailed industry. Prepared establishment counts, employment and payroll, with names, size bands and source flags ready for analysis.

2023 business statistics · 2017 NAICS · georef22 county reference

353,065county/industry records

14main-table fields

956detailed industries with county data

3,142published county totals

01 / KNOW THE FIT

A useful join starts
with a clear meaning.

What you can do with it

Compare an industry across sales territories, screen local business markets, or enrich county-and-industry-coded records with employment and payroll. Names, source flags, reference coverage and a checked Python example remove repeated file preparation.

What one row means

One main-table row is a published county × six-digit 2017 NAICS combination. County totals and employee-size bands are separate tables; statewide unassigned activity is retained separately.

Unique key
county_fips + naics_code

How to join it

Join county_fips (five text characters) and naics_code (six text characters) together. Keep leading zeros and verify the classification and geography vintage. Use the published county totals instead of summing incomplete industry detail.

Compare county business activity in Python →

Coverage, with the edges visible

353,065 detailed county/industry records across 956 published six-digit industries, plus 3,142 county totals. References include 3,144 counties/equivalents and 970 six-digit industries. All 1,100,961 original source rows have explicit outcomes. Covers 50 states and DC; no territories.

Keep in mind

Employer establishments, not every business, firms, individual workers or a business contact list. Nonemployers and most government activity are outside CBP scope.
An absent county/industry row is not zero. Size-band N values remain blank with status and original source values. Fourteen reference industries and two reference counties have no published county detail.
Payroll is in thousands of nominal 2023 USD. Employment and payroll are noise perturbed; G/H/J flags are retained and are not margins of error.
2017 NAICS and 2022–2023 county reference, including Connecticut planning regions. No allocation to 2022 NAICS, ZIPs or another geography.

WHAT MAKES IT ACTUALLY CLEAN

Preserves text identifiers, original numeric cells and disclosure flags. Adds county and industry names, separates detail from totals and statewide activity, and turns unavailable size counts into explicit blanks with statuses. Every source row is accounted for and all delivered table cells are compared to the original source. How we prepare and version our data →

02 / TRY THE SHAPE

Real rows. Before you buy.

These are the first three rows from the delivered CSV, showing 6 of 14 fields. The free download contains the first five rows and all 14 fields; it is a format sample, not a coverage test.

2023 County & Industry Business Reference · first three rows
county_fips	county_name	naics_code	industry_name	establishments	annual_payroll_thousand_usd
01001	Autauga County, Alabama	113310	Logging	7	2377
01001	Autauga County, Alabama	212321	Construction Sand and Gravel Mining	4	1108
01001	Autauga County, Alabama	236115	New Single-Family Housing Construction (except For-Sale Builders)	9	852

03 / NO GUESSING

Main table fields, explained.

The main table’s field dictionary from the current download. CSV has no built-in types; these are the intended import types.

All 14 fields in CSV order
Field	Type	Meaning
`county_fips`	string	Five-character county/equivalent FIPS, kept as text. Excludes statewide 999.
`county_name`	string	County/equivalent name from Census georef22, including the state name.
`naics_code`	string	Six-character 2017 NAICS code, kept as text.
`industry_name`	string	Published 2017 CBP industry label.
`reference_year`	integer	2023: year described by the statistics, not capture or ACD preparation year.
`naics_vintage`	string	2017: classification edition used in this CBP release.
`establishments`	integer	Employer establishments: physical operating locations, not firms or people.
`employees_mid_march`	integer	Paid employees for the pay period including March 12, 2023; noise perturbed.
`employment_noise_flag`	string	G: <2%, H: 2–<5%, J: >=5% noise perturbation. Not a sampling margin of error.
`first_quarter_payroll_thousand_usd`	number	January–March 2023 payroll in thousands of nominal USD; noise perturbed.
`first_quarter_payroll_noise_flag`	string	Noise flag for first-quarter payroll; same G/H/J meanings.
`annual_payroll_thousand_usd`	number	2023 annual payroll in thousands of nominal USD; noise perturbed.
`annual_payroll_noise_flag`	string	Noise flag for annual payroll; same G/H/J meanings.
`source_row`	integer	One-based data row in cbp23co.txt, excluding its header.

04 / INSIDE THE DOWNLOAD

Data, with its context.

One ZIP · 18.1 MB · 20 files. No account or subscription required.

README.mdImport guidance, method, attribution, and limitations
all_tables_dictionary.jsonField definitions and types for all seven data/accounting tables
checksums.jsonSHA-256 checksums for the release files
counties.csv3,144 county reference keys with names and publication status
county_industry.csvMain prepared table · UTF-8 CSV
county_totals.csv3,142 published all-industry county totals
data_dictionary.jsonTypes and definitions for every field
establishment_sizes.csv13 employee-size bands per detail key; original cells, analytical counts and statuses
example.pyCopyable Python territory join, also runnable in a notebook
example_input.csvFictional territories paired with real county and industry identifiers
example_output.txtExpected printed results
example_result.csvExpected enriched territory records
industries.csv970 six-digit 2017 NAICS reference codes and county coverage
metadata.jsonSource provenance, production time, counts, and CSV checksum
provenance.jsonRetained source identifiers, URLs and file checksums
quality_report.jsonCoverage, missingness and product-specific quality checks
revision.jsonChanges and free-upgrade eligibility for this ACD revision
source_row_status.csvOne outcome for every original source data row
statewide_source_rows.csv10,525 original county-code 999 records; not state totals
verification.jsonIndependent original-source comparison counts

05 / DATES THAT MEAN SOMETHING

Sources, versions & changes.

Source versions identify the inputs. Our processing revision describes how we prepare them. Either kind of change creates a new ACD release; the package date records when it was built.

Current source versions

Census reference year: 2023
Census release date: June 26, 2025
Industry classification: 2017 NAICS
County reference: georef22 (2022–2023)
ACD source capture: October 16, 2026
ACD processing revision: 1 · county detail, totals, size bands and source accounting
Package prepared (UTC): Oct 16, 2026

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns. Independent preparation by Actually Clean Data; no Census endorsement. Original source data are available free from Census.

RELEASE HISTORY

Oct 16, 2026 · current package (UTC)

First paid ACD CBP release using 2023 source statistics. Seven reference, fact and accounting tables, dictionaries, provenance, quality checks and a working Python example. No earlier paid ACD release is being compared.

Initial release: 2023 source statistics and ACD preparation

Processing corrections and improvements for your purchased source edition are free. Genuinely new source editions may be sold separately. See the update policy and access instructions.

Check the downloaded CSV’s integrity

The metadata file inside the ZIP records this SHA-256 checksum for county_industry.csv. A matching checksum confirms identical CSV bytes.

bded30b2141e087d97f193e815678f7e246362fc2558e94f0e88b0899ae4dfe1

READY TO PUT IT TO WORK?