Also referred to as a “Payrolled Business Location”, an establishment is a single physical location of some type of economic activity (a business), used for reporting purposes in government data sources. A single company may have multiple establishments.
As an example, a single company with its corporate office in New York, a paper manufacturing plant in Georgia, and fifteen warehouses in various cities would comprise a total of seventeen establishments, and each establishment would be classified according to its own type of activity. In this case, three different industries would be used:
Corporate, subsidiary, and regional managing offices
Paper (except newsprint) mills
General warehousing and storage
Source: QCEW.