U.S. Census Bureau, Quarterly Financial Report for
Manufacturing, Mining, and Trade Corporations. See also
2006 4th quarter press release issued April 2007 < http://www.census.gov/csd/qfr/ >
For more information
http://www.census.gov/csd/qfr/pub.html
QUARTERLY FINANCIAL REPORT
PURPOSE
To provide current statistics on the financial performance and
conditions of domestic manufacturing, mining, and trade
corporations. The United States Code, Title 13, requires this
survey and provides for mandatory responses.
COVERAGE
Corporations that have a plurality of business activity in
manufacturing industries and domestic assets over $250,000;
and corporations with a plurality of business activity in the
mining, retail, or wholesale trade industries and domestic
assets over $50 million. These include almost 172,000
corporations with estimated assets of over $4.6 trillion.
CONTENT
Corporations provide standard income statement and balance
sheet data consolidated for all majority-owned domestic
enterprises (except banking, insurance, and finance).
Information collected includes sales, depreciation, before-
and after-tax income, retained earnings, cash, investments,
receivables, inventories, fixed assets, short- and long-term
debt, accounts payable, and stockholders’ equity.
Large corporations report additional data that include
separate reporting of nonoperating income and expenses,
earnings from foreign and other nonconsolidated entities and
investments, extraordinary gains and losses, trade
receivables from the U.S. Government, investments in
Federal and other securities, commercial paper issued, and
treasury stock.
FREQUENCY
Quarterly since 1947, the program was transferred to the
Census Bureau from the Federal Trade Commission in 1982.
Data collection begins about 25 days after each quarter and
continues for about 9 weeks; data are for 3 months of
company activities. The survey panel is updated quarterly.
METHODS
Mail-out/mail-back surveys of some 4,100 large
manufacturing, mining, and trade corporations using a long
form, and of some 4,600 selected small- and medium-sized
manufacturers using a short form; in addition internet reporting
is offered to all companies. A classification question is listed
on the forms to determine and update business industries.
The sample frame of firms is updated annually from Federal
income tax records. Using the tax data, corporations are
selected by stratified random sample, with strata by industry
and asset size.
Data for manufacturing firms with assets
between $250,000 and $250 million are estimated from a
sample panel. Each quarter, one-eighth of the sample panel is
replaced. Replacement firms report for 8 quarters.
PRODUCTS
Quarterly Financial Report for Manufacturing, Mining, and
Trade Corporations publications are released 75 days after
each of the first three quarters, and 95 days after the fourth
quarter. The report provides 5 quarters of data, including
estimated statements of income and retained earnings,
balance sheets, and related financial and operating ratios by
industry and asset size. Revisions to data for prior quarters
are made when necessary and usually result from respondent
data corrections subsequent to publication. Information is
provided, when possible, on material distortions in
comparability due to changes in accounting conventions or
users’ needs.
referenced on dataset section Notes (#2)
