Diversified REITs data: tenant economics and the listed tape, in one catalog. · Head-to-head
Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) vs LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) - NAICS 56
Which diversified reits data: tenant economics and the listed tape, in one catalog. data fits your job: Business Dynamics Statistics, or LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators - NAICS 56. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS)
LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) - NAICS 56
Where the fields line up
2 shared fields — join on these.
| Field | Business Dynamics Statistics | LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators - NAICS 56 |
|---|---|---|
YEAR | Reference year of the annual measures. | Reference year. |
EMP | Number of employees in the cell. | Beginning-of-quarter employment: total jobs on the first day of the reference quarter. |
Coverage, side by side
| Business Dynamics Statistics | LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators - NAICS 56 | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | United States national plus state, county and metro/micro table families | 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico, plus county, metro/micro and Workforce Investment Board areas |
| Temporal | Annual observations, 1978 through 2023 | Quarterly observations from 1990 (observed state files begin 1991 Q1) |
| Granularity | One row per geography x NAICS sector x year, counting firms and establishments | One row per geography x industry x quarter x demographic x firm-age/size cell, counting jobs |
What each contains
They tie on 2 attributes. Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| Business Dynamics Statistics | LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators - NAICS 56 | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | U.S. Census Bureau | U.S. Census Bureau (LEHD program) |
| Subject lens | Employer demography: firm and establishment births, deaths, survival, job creation and destruction | Labor flow: employment, hires, separations, stable-job turnover and full-quarter earnings |
| Unit of analysis | One row per geography x NAICS sector x year, counting firms and establishments | One row per geography x industry x quarter x demographic x firm-age/size cell, counting jobs |
| Temporal grain | Annual observations, 1978 through 2023 | Quarterly observations from 1990 (observed state files begin 1991 Q1) |
| Documented fields | 23 variables (verified) | 23 variables (verified) |
| Geographic coverage | United States national plus state, county and metro/micro table families | 50 states, DC and Puerto Rico, plus county, metro/micro and Workforce Investment Board areas |
| Industry cut | NAICS 2017 sectors including 56, administrative and support and waste management | NAICS industries at the 2-digit level for this cut, filterable to 56 in every state |
| Signature fields | `FIRM`, `ESTAB`, `EMP`, `ESTABS_ENTRY_RATE`, `ESTABS_EXIT_RATE`, `JOB_CREATION_BIRTHS`, `JOB_DESTRUCTION_DEATHS`, `NET_JOB_CREATION_RATE`, `REALLOCATION_RATE`, `FIRMDEATH_EMP` | `Emp`, `EmpEnd`, `EmpS`, `HirA`, `HirN`, `Sep`, `TurnOvrS`, `FrmJbGn`, `FrmJbLs`, `EarnS` |
| Demographic cuts | None - business characteristics only | Sex, age group, education, plus race and ethnicity codes and firm age/size in the schema |
| Small-cell handling | Companion `_F` flag columns mark reliability and suppression per measure | Companion `s*` status flags mark availability and suppression per indicator |
| Scale | Fourteen table packages totalling roughly 4 GB; the NAICS package about 152 MB compressed | Roughly 132 compressed files per state per release, tens of KB to tens of MB each |
| Best for | Multi-decade entry, exit, survival and net job creation studies | Current-quarter hiring, churn and wage monitoring by local labor market |
What each does better
Business Dynamics Statistics
Depth of history. Annual measures run 1978 through 2023, so any question about NAICS 56 that reaches before 1990 - how the sector looked coming off the late-1970s expansion, how entry behaved across earlier recessions - has exactly one instrument here. The two sample rows bracket the sector's early boom: firms up from 109,271 to 118,974 and employment from 1,965,725 to 2,221,831 in a single year, 1978 to 1979.
Employer demography, not just job flow. Firm and establishment counts arrive alongside establishment entries and exits with their rates - 26,383 establishment births at a 22.585 percent entry rate in the 1978 row - and firm-death measures (FIRMDEATH_FIRMS, FIRMDEATH_EMP) capture who exited outright. QWI's nearest equivalents (FrmJbGn, FrmJbLs) track gains and losses but cannot tell a surviving employer shrinking from one that closed.
The classic job-flow arithmetic, precomputed. The Davis-Haltiwanger-Schuh denominator (DENOM), net job creation and its rate, and the reallocation rate ship as columns rather than derivations, so entry, exit and churning-intensity studies start from finished measures.
Cut dimensions built around business structure. Beyond the NAICS table, the same measures are published by establishment age, firm age, establishment size, combined firm age and size, geography and metro area, with the geographic cuts reaching counties and metropolitan or micropolitan areas.
LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators - NAICS 56
Quarterly resolution on hiring and churn. Beginning-of-quarter employment, end-of-quarter employment and stable full-quarter employment (Emp, EmpEnd, EmpS) arrive with all accessions (HirA), new hires excluding recalls (HirN) and separations (Sep) four times a year. In the California NAICS 56 row for 1991 Q4, stable full-quarter employment ran 457,812 against 630,048 at the quarter's start - roughly 172,000 jobs did not last the quarter - and separations outnumbered all accessions, 324,011 against 300,325. None of that texture exists in an annual frame.
Worker demographics attached to every indicator. Sex, age group and education are enum columns on every cell, with race and ethnicity codes defined in the same schema, and firm age and firm size rounding out the cuts. Any indicator - hires, separations, earnings, employment - resolves by demographic cell. The BDS dictionary carries no person dimension at all.
Wage-versus-turnover analysis needs no second dataset.
Geographic spread, cell by cell. Fifty states, DC and Puerto Rico, with county, metro/micro and Workforce Investment Board areas reachable alongside, and a seasonal-adjustment enum (seasonadj) carried on every record.
Where they're equivalent
The overlap is wider than the different rhythms suggest:
- Same publisher. Both come from the U.S. Census Bureau - BDS as the long-run business dynamics program, QWI through its Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program.
- Same industry cut. Both key NAICS 56 at the two-digit level, and neither record confirms detail below the sector boundary for this slice - the staffing-versus-janitorial split within 56 is beyond both.
- Same honesty about small cells. Every measure travels with companion status flags -
_Fflag columns beside each BDS measure,s*status flags beside each QWI indicator - so suppressed or flagged values are visible rather than silently zero. - Same quality mark. Both score 9 out of 10 on Datadory's scale against the 7.81 catalog average, and both were URL-verified during the August 2026 research pass.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both - they tie at 9 out of 10, and they answer different questions about the same workforce.
Take Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) when the unit of analysis is the employer: entry-rate benchmarking for the staffing sector, survival and firm-death studies, reallocation analysis with the DHS machinery, or any series that must reach back before 1990.
Take LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) - NAICS 56 when the unit of analysis is the job: whether hires are outrunning separations this quarter, how stable-job turnover behaves by state or metro, what full-quarter earnings are doing relative to churn, and how any of it splits by worker age, sex or education.
Three quick tests settle most cases. Need pre-1990 history? Only BDS has it. Need this quarter, hires versus quits-shaped churn, or a wage number? Only QWI has those. Need to know whether employers themselves are being born, surviving or dying - rather than whether jobs are moving? That is the BDS question again. In practice, for a sector that services commercial property, the pair is complementary by design: structure over decades, pulse by quarter.
Sample both, pick by fit. See Business Dynamics Statistics · See LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators - NAICS 56
Fair questions
Is Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) better than LEHD Quarterly Workforce Indicators (QWI) - NAICS 56?
Better at different questions about the same sector - both score 9 out of 10. BDS wins whenever the unit is the employer: entry and exit rates, firm deaths, survival across cycles, and any series needing 1978-onward history. QWI wins whenever the unit is the job: quarterly hires, separations, stable-job turnover, earnings and demographic cuts BDS simply lacks.
Which dataset reaches further back?
Business Dynamics Statistics, by more than a decade: annual measures run 1978 through 2023, while the quarterly workforce panel begins in 1990 and its observed state files start 1991 Q1. For NAICS 56 in the 1980s or earlier, BDS is the only instrument of the two with anything on the shelf.
Do the two datasets overlap?
On the industry cut - NAICS 56 at the two-digit level - the publisher, and the conceptual core: employment levels and job creation and destruction exist in both dictionaries. Beyond that they part fast. BDS counts firms and establishments once a year; QWI counts jobs by quarter with worker demographics and earnings attached.
Can I combine the two datasets in one analysis?
Yes, at the model level rather than the row level. Read the structural baseline from BDS - entry, exit and reallocation across decades - then the current pulse from QWI - hires versus separations, turnover and pay by state. Reconcile before mixing: employees counted annually will never equal jobs counted quarterly, so aggregate quarters to years and carry the status flags.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes. Either record arrives alone or both arrive merged onto one calendar - delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call - normalized to their documented field dictionaries with sample rows for inspection before anything ships. Name the geography, industry cells and year windows when you request the sample. Or take both in one feed.