Content and Uses

Census Bureau pre-decisional

Crosswalk of Survey Content and Agency Requesting Item

Question

Categories

Agency
Requesting
Item

Overall, how has this
business been affected
by the Coronavirus
pandemic?

Select only one:
• Large negative effect
• Moderate negative effect
• Little or no effect
• Moderate positive effect
• Large positive effect

CENSUS

Operating
revenue (bins)

In the last month, what
were the total operating
revenues/sales/receipts
for this business, not
including any financial
assistance or loans?

Select only one:
• $0 - $500
• $501 - $2,500
• $2,501 - $5,000
• $5,001 - $15,000
• $15,001 - $50,000
• $50,001 - $125,000
• $125,001 - $200,000
• $200,001 - $500,000
• $500,001 or more
• Don’t know

CENSUS

Operating
revenue

In the last week, did this
business have a change
in operating
revenues/sales/receipts,
not including any
financial assistance or
loans?

Select only one:
• Yes, increased
• Yes, decreased
• No

MBDA,
CENSUS

Operating status

In the last week, did this
business do any of the
following?

Item Concept

1

2

3

4

Subjective well
being

Select only one:
• Open a previously closed
location
• Temporarily close a location
• Permanently close a location
• None of the above

FRB, SBA,
CENSUS

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Census Bureau pre-decisional

5

6

7

8

9

# Employees

Re-hiring

# Hours worked

Work from
home

Supply chain

In the last week, did this
business have a change
in the number of paid
employees?

Select only one:
• Yes, increased
• Yes, decreased
• No change

ITA,
MBDA,
CENSUS

In the last week, did this
business re-hire any
paid employees who
had been furloughed or
laid off after March 13,
2020?
In the last week, did this
business have a change
in the total number of
hours worked by paid
employees?

Select only one:
• Yes
• No
• This business did not furlough
or lay off any paid employees
after March 13, 2020.

Census,
FRB, BLS

Select only one:
• Yes, increased
• Yes, decreased
• No change

BLS, ITA,
CENSUS

• Yes, increased
• Yes, decreased
• No change
• This business does not have
paid employees who work from
home

Census,
NTIA, BTS

In the last week, did this
business have a change
in the total number of
hours paid employees
worked from home?

Select all that apply:
• Domestic supplier delays
• Foreign supplier delays
• Difficulty locating alternate
In the last week, did this domestic suppliers
business have any of the • Difficulty locating alternate
following?
foreign suppliers
• Production delays at this
business
• Delays in delivery / shipping to
customers
• None of the above

BEA, ITA,
CENSUS

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Census Bureau pre-decisional

10

Operating
capacity factors

11

Operating
capacity
changes

12

Cash flow

Select all that apply:
• Ability to re-hire furloughed or
laid off employees and/or hire
new employees
• Availability of employees to
work
In the last week, was
• Ability of employees to work
this business’s operating remotely
capacity affected by any • Physical distancing of
of the following?
employees
Operating capacity is
• Physical distancing of
the maximum amount
customers or clients and/or limits
of activity this business
on the number of concurrent
could conduct under
customers or clients
realistic operating
• Availability of Personal
conditions.
Protective Equipment (PPE)
and/or related equipment or
supplies
• Availability of other supplies or
inputs used to provide good or
services
• None of the above
How would you
describe this business’s • Operating capacity has
current operating
increased 50% or more
capacity relative to one • Operating capacity has
year ago? Operating
increased less than 50%
capacity is the
• No change in operating
maximum amount of
capacity
activity this business
• Operating capacity has
could conduct under
decreased less than 50%
realistic operating
• Operating capacity has
conditions.
decreased 50% or more
Select only one:
• 1-7 days of business operations
• 1-2 weeks of business
How would you
operations
describe the current
• 3-4 weeks of business
availability of cash on
operations
hand for this business?
• 1-2 months of business
Currently, cash on hand
operations
will cover:
• 3 or more months of business
operations
• No cash available for business

FRB,BLS,
Census

FRB,
Census

BEA, FRB,
CENSUS

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Census Bureau pre-decisional

operations.
• Don’t know

13

14

Loan defaults

Since March 13, 2020,
has this business missed
any loan payments?
Loan payments that
have been forgiven or
postponed should not
be considered to be
missed.

Y/N

BEA, FRB,
CENSUS

Other payment
defaults

Since March 13, 2020,
has this business missed
any other scheduled
payments, not including
loans? Examples of
other scheduled
payments include rent,
utilities, and payroll.
Scheduled payments
that have been forgiven
or postponed should
not be considered to be
missed.

Y/N

BEA, FRB,
CENSUS

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Census Bureau pre-decisional

15

16

Application for
financial
assistance

Since March 13, 2020,
has this business
requested financial
assistance from any of
the following sources?

Receipt of
financial
assistance

Since March 13, 2020,
has this business
received financial
assistance from any of
these programs from
the Federal
government?

Select all that apply:
• Paycheck Protection Program
(PPP)
• Economic Injury Disaster Loans
(EIDL)
• Small Business Administration
(SBA) Loan Forgiveness
• Main Street Lending Program
• Deferral of Federal
Employment Tax Deposits and
Payments
• Federal Sick and Family Leave
Tax Credits
• Federal Employee Retention
Tax Credit
• Other Federal programs
• State or local government
programs
• Banks
• Self
• Family or friends
• Other sources
• This business has not requested
financial assistance from any
source since March 13, 2020.
Select all that apply:
• Paycheck Protection Program
(PPP)
• Economic Injury Disaster Loans
(EIDL)
• SBA Loan Forgiveness
• Main Street Lending Program
• Deferral of Federal
Employment Tax Deposits and
Payments
• Federal Sick and Family Leave
Tax Credits
• Federal Employee Retention
Tax Credit
• Other Federal programs
• This business has not received
financial assistance from any
Federal program since March 13,
2020.

BEA, FRB,
SBA, OTA,
CENSUS

BEA, FRB,
SBA,
CENSUS

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Census Bureau pre-decisional

17

18

19

Online
platforms

Since March 13, 2020,
has there been an
increase in this
business’s use of online
platforms to offer goods
or services?

Future needs

In the next 6 months, do
you think this business
will need to do any of
the following?

Subjective
return to normal
operations

In your opinion, how
much time do you think
will pass before this
business returns to its
usual level of
operations?

Select only one:
• Yes
• No
• This business does not use
online platforms to offer goods
or services.
• Obtain financial assistance or
additional capital
• Identify new supply chain
options
• Develop online sales or
websites
• Increase marketing or sales
• Learn how to better provide for
the safety of customers and
employees
• Identify and hire new
employees
• Permanently close this business
• None of the above
Select only one:
• 1 month or less
• 2-3 months
• 4-6 months
• More than 6 months
• I do not believe this business
will return to its normal level of
operations.
• This business has permanently
closed.
• There has been little or no
effect on this business's normal
level of operations.
• This business has returned to
its normal level of operations.

Census,
NTIA, ITA

SBA

BEA, FRB,
SBA,
CENSUS

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Census Bureau pre-decisional

Small Business Pulse Survey Content and Uses
Background:
The Census Bureau proposes to collect the Small Business Pulse Survey (SBPS) in order to
supplement its existing collections in order to provide timely information on the state of
businesses in the U.S. economy in order to fulfill its mission “to serve as the nation's leading
provider of quality data about its people and economy.” The SBPS is intended to complement
existing Census business collections by providing high-frequency detailed information on a
business sub-population especially impacted by the response to the coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic. As such, the results from the SBPS will be particularly useful to policymakers as they
seek to address some of the challenges faced by small businesses. In addition, the information
will be useful to businesses making decisions and researchers studying the impact of the
response to COVID-19.
The Census Bureau will provide tabulated data based on each of the questions included in the
spreadsheet provided. Also, the Census Bureau will match the SBPS data to its extensive
microdata (the Business Register, Annual Business Survey, Economic Census, etc.) in order to
develop additional insights into the experience of businesses and business owners. The Census
Bureau will also look at these data in the longer run to establish if answers to these questions, or
an index based on these questions, can be used to predict important business outcomes including
business failures (exit or deaths).
Overview of content:
Questions 1-8 and 17 focus on the operations of the business. Subjective measure of well-being
as well as changes in employment and hours, re-hiring laid off employees, changes in hours
worked from home, changes in operating status and operating revenues all serve to provide an
indication of how well small businesses are performing in the prior week. Questions 4-8 will
provide critically important measures of the margins by which small businesses are adjusting
their labor use (by shutdowns, employment, hours, re-hiring, or employees working from home).
The choice of margin(s) has profound implications for the U.S. workforce. By asking this
question weekly about the experience of the business in the prior week, the SBPS will provide a
high frequency measure of small business performance. Question 17 asks businesses about a
change in the use of online platforms to offer goods and services since the declaration of the
national emergency.
Questions 9-10 focus on challenges that small businesses may face including supply chain
problems and a variety of factors that affect the ability to offer goods and services including
physical distancing of employees, customers or clients as well as the availability of Personal
Protective Equipment (PPE) or other supplies. Asked weekly, these questions will provide high
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Census Bureau pre-decisional

frequency information on the types of challenges businesses face. This index may be compared
with answers to Question 1 to also assess if the subjective responses are in line with overall
responses to components of impact.
Question 11 asks how respondents business’s operating capacity relative to one year ago.
Questions 12-16 center on finance issues for small business (and include liquidity, loan and other
defaults, and applications for and receipt of financial assistance). The question on liquidity asks
about the current status of the business. The remaining finance questions ask about the
experience of the business since the onset of the pandemic, providing a cumulative view of these
concepts each week. These questions may also be used to design a financial stress index to
assess the overall financial stress/need a business faces.
Question 18 asks businesses about their future program needs. Businesses are asked what kinds
of assistance they might need in the next six months including financial assistance or additional
capital, help developing new customers or websites, or help permanently closing, for example.
Question 19 asks about the expectation of when the business may return to normal levels of
operations. This forward-looking question will allow for the measurement of expectations over
the survey period. These subjective expectations by businesses about their own operations will
provide insights into future operations that will be useful to policymakers in considering the
timing of assistance policies. Businesses will also find it useful in making their decisions to be
informed of the expectations of other businesses.
Question 19 response bins are updated from phase 1 of the SBPS to include responses that allow
for the return to normal as well as permanent closure. While the SBPS phase 1 did see an
increase in response shares towards the “more than 6 months” bin across the nine weeks of the
survey, the phase 2 survey does not add increasingly longer response bins for phase 2. This
decision was made in order to preserve the comparability of data between phases 1 and 2, but
also because mechanically the rotation of the panels and the delay between phases 1 and 2
automatically extends the time horizon of this question, given we are repeating panels between
phases 1 and 2.
By providing data at the sub-national level (state and select MSA), these questions will provide
information on disparate effects of the emergency across states/MSA. Sector detail will provide
information on the disparate effects of the emergency across industries.
Justification of survey content by question:
Q1: Subjective well being
Answers provide a subjective view of the effect of the response to COVID-19 on the business.
This measure can be used to help validate the responses to other questions in the survey and
vice-versa. If we find widespread disagreement between the subjective measure of the impact on
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Census Bureau pre-decisional

the business and the objective measures in (Q2-8), we will conduct de-briefing to determine if
existing concepts need to be revised or additional concepts need to be added. Together with
Q19, this question may provide information on the overall well-being of businesses and the
speed at which the economy may resume/recover.

Q2: Total operating revenues
This is the only question within the SBPS that gives insight to the scale of the business through a
quantitative measure. The question asks for the respondent to select one bin to provide a “best
estimate”. This is a different approach than our standard surveys which emphasize the use of
write-in boxes and require more precise responses based on records, thus reducing burden on the
respondent. Responses to this question will aid in assessing and adjusting imputation methods for
economic indicator programs. Indicator surveys rely on small sample sizes in order to process
data on a very short time schedule. High nonresponse is anticipated for several months during
the pandemic, which will reduce the quantity of data available to form the imputation bases used
to estimate data for nonresponding firms. Responses to Q2 may be used to augment the existing
indicator response data, along with Q3 and Q4, and will be used to support analysis of the
indicator estimates. In addition, responses to this question will be used to support development
of a new monthly experimental retail sales product by state.
Q3: Change in operating revenues
With Q2, this question will be used to support analysis and publication of indicator program data
including experimental retail sales by state data.
This question will also provide a high-frequency indication of small business performance and
changes in performance in the aggregate over time.
Q4: Operating status
This question will provide a high-frequency indication of small business performance and
changes in performance in the aggregate over time.
Q5: Change in #paid employees
This question will provide a high-frequency indication of small business performance and
changes in performance in the aggregate over time.
Q6: Re-hiring employees
This question will provide a high-frequency indication of the degree to which small businesses
are re-hiring laid off or furloughed employees. It will allow the Census Bureau to infer the rate
at which small businesses have cumulatively laid off or furloughed their employees since the
onset of the national emergency.

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Q7: Change in #hours paid employees
This question will also provide a high-frequency indication of small business performance and
changes in performance in the aggregate over time.
The BLS are interested in this item, as “staff are working with the BLS Productivity program to
assess different adjustments that will need to be made to the OPT measures that adjust hours to
account for the difference between hours paid and hours worked. Right now they get that
adjustment from the National Compensation Survey, but if there is higher nonresponse among
smaller establishments in the NCS in the June quarter, we will be interested in external sources
of data to use in the hours worked versus hours paid adjustments.”
Policy-makers would also be interested in businesses’ ability to retain workers by adjusting
hours. The federal Unemployment Insurance system has programs intended to encourage
businesses to retain workers by instead adjusting labor by hours rather than number of workers.
Q8: Work from home
This question will measure the degree to which working from home has changed. This question
will provide a high frequency measure of changes due to rapidly evolving business conditions.
Q9: Supply chain
This question will provide a high-frequency indication of a potential challenge small businesses
are facing that will impact their current and future performance.
Factors that disruption the supply-chain are also indicative of challenges that other businesses are
facing and help us to understand how these disruptions are propagated throughout the economy.
Q10: Operating capacity factors
Question 10 primes respondents to think about factors that might affect their business’s operating
capacity. Question 10 is useful cognitively in priming respondents to think about differences
between former and current operating capacity; it also includes information that helpful in
further understanding the challenges small businesses are facing, including the ability of
businesses to provide enough PPE for their workers and the impact of physical distancing on
capacity.
Q11: Operating capacity changes
Question 11 asks respondents to compare their current operating capacity to their operating
capacity one year ago. Along with Q10, this question will help understand the operating
constraints (and thus limitation on potential output) businesses are facing. This is also a new
measurement concept (expanding production capability from manufacturing into other sectors)
for the Census Bureau to research and test.

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Census Bureau pre-decisional

Q12: Cash on hand
Together with Q13, Q14, Q15, and Q16, this question will give an indication of the financial
stress that small businesses are currently facing as well as how this is changing over time.
Cash on hand may signal time-to-failure for small businesses in the absence of financial
assistance and may be of interest to policymakers.
Q13: Missed payments – loans
Together with Q12, Q14, Q15, and Q16, this question will give an indication of the financial
stress that small businesses are currently facing as well as how this is changing over time.
Loan defaults may signal time-to-failure for small businesses in the absence of financial
assistance and may be of interest to policymakers.
The Federal Reserve Board of Governors (FRB) produce statistics on loan defaults and
specifically suggested this content for small businesses. See
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/chargeoff/delallsa.htm
Q14: Missed payments - other
Together with Q12, Q13, Q15, and Q16, this question will give an indication of the financial
stress that small businesses are currently facing as well as how this is changing over time.
Payment defaults may signal time-to-failure for small businesses in the absence of financial
assistance and may be of interest to policymakers.
Q15: Application for assistance
Together with Q12, Q13, Q15, and Q16, this question will give an indication of the financial
stress that small businesses are currently facing as well as how this is changing over time.
The responses for Q15 include three federal programs for small businesses listed on the website:
https://www.coronavirus.gov/smallbusiness/. These are Paycheck Protection Program, Economic
Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), and SBA Loan Forgiveness. The responses also include the
Federal Reserve Main Street Lending program as well as one federal tax deferral program and
two federal tax credit programs: Deferral of Federal Employment Tax Deposits and Payments,
Federal Sick and Family Leave Tax Credits, and Federal Employee Retention Tax Credit.
Application rate by geography and industry will be of interest to policymakers including the
Office of Tax Analysis (OTA), Department of Treasure; the SBA; and FRB.
Understanding how federal program applications are supplemented with other types of assistance
may also be important to policymakers.

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Census Bureau pre-decisional

Q16: Receipt of assistance
Together with Q12, Q13, Q14, and Q15, this question will give an indication of the financial
stress that small businesses are currently facing as well as how this is changing over time.
Receipt of assistance by geography and industry will be of interest to policymakers including the
OTA, SBA and FRB.
The responses for Q16 focus on four federal assistance and loan programs and three federal tax
programs listed in Q15. Having these as separate responses will enable us to compare these
results to published tabulations of disbursements by state. See
https://content.sba.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/PPP%20Report%20SBA%204.14.20%20%20%20%20Read-Only.pdf
Q17: Online platforms
This question asks busineses how their use of online platforms to offer goods and services has
changed since the onset of the national emergency. This change by small businesses into/out of
the online marketplace will provide a measure of adaptability. This may also inform Census
Bureau e-commerce programs.
Q18: Future needs
Developed with the Small Business Administration, this question asks respondents about future
program needs.
Q19: Subjective return to normal
The survey ends with a forward-looking question intended to elicit the respondents’ subjective
business expectations. Similar to the more holistic approach in Question 1, this question asks an
open-ended question about the expected time frame for the business to return to functioning as it
did prior to the pandemic. It does not require the respondent to anchor this assessment to a
particular variable (such as employment) since the pandemic shock is unprecedented in both size
and scope and we are hoping to capture a more-encompassing measure.
A similar forward-looking approach occurs when the Census Bureau collects subjective business
expectations through the Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS) supplement
to the Annual Survey of Manufactures. In this case, respondents are asked to anchor their
expectation to four concepts (shipments, employment, materials, and investment). Research
conducted on these expectations and their realizations has found that these expectations provide
important information about the future plans of businesses.
The Census Bureau has been conducting research into expanding collection of these measures of
subjective business expectations into other sectors of the economy and has consulted with the
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Census Bureau pre-decisional

Federal Reserve Board (FRB) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on these efforts. We
believe that these questions concerning subjective business expectations will also be of interest
to the FRB and BEA. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank collects subjective business
expectations through its monthly Survey of Business Uncertainty (SBU).1 The Office of National
Statistics (ONS) in the U.K. also includes questions concerning business expectations as part of
its Business Impact of Coronavirus Survey (BICS).
Note that the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) collected information
about subjective business expectations for decades as part of the Plant and Equipment Survey
whose results were published as a principal economic indicator.
Businesses will also find it useful in making their decisions to understand the expectations of
other businesses. Two organizations focused on small businesses regularly collect information
about business expectations. The Small Business Index published quarterly by METLife and the
US Chamber Commerce asks about business expectations for revenue, hiring, and investment.2
The National Federation of Independent Business also collects forecasts and expectations on its
monthly Small Business Economic Trends.3 These both have about 1000 businesses as
respondents.

1

https://www.frbatlanta.org/research/surveys/business-uncertainty.aspx
https://www.uschamber.com/sbindex/pdf/sbi_reports/SBI_2020_Q1.pdf
3
https://www.nfib.com/assets/SBET-PDF-March-2020.pdf
2

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