What is it?
Business data in Analyst comes from DatabaseUSA. Unlike other data found in Analyst, Lightcast does not incorporate DatabaseUSA figures into our core labor market offerings. In practice, this means that Lightcast's job counts, wages, and establishment numbers you find in an Industry Overview report are not influenced by or inclusive of DatabaseUSA data. We provide the business level data to our customers as a convenience, but as the sources and methodologies differ significantly, we keep those numbers separate in reports.
Where does it come from?
DatabaseUSA business data is gathered from about 6,000 different sources, adding roughly 300,000 new businesses to their listings quarterly. These are largely directory and event-driven sources, including:
New business filings
Utility connections
Press releases
Corporate websites
Annual reports
User-generated feedback
U.S. & Canadian Yellow Page directories
These sources are validated by web research, news monitoring, and over 24 million phone calls by a large full-time staff to verify existing information.
How is it different from Lightcast data?
A common question when looking at business data alongside labor market data is "Why don't they match up?" In a nutshell, there is little to no overlap between the sources DatabaseUSA pulls from and the sources Lightcast uses to create our data. Business data research has a bit of a treasure hunt aspect to it, where you go out into the wilds of the internet to dig up the info you're after. LMI isn't hidden away, but published on publicly available state and federal websites.
Lightcast does use business patterns from DBUSA to model ZIP code level employment
Census Tract methodology