The U.S. Census Bureau has released the latest Business Formation Statistics (BFS) for August 2025. These statistics offer monthly updates on new business applications and formations across the United States, including both seasonally and nonseasonally adjusted data at national, regional, and state levels.
The BFS is a regular product from the Census Bureau and is developed in partnership with economists from several institutions, including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the University of Maryland, and the University of Notre Dame.
Alongside these figures for the 50 states and Washington D.C., the Census Bureau has also published Monthly Puerto Rico Business Applications. This experimental dataset tracks four series of business applications each month for Puerto Rico using methods consistent with those applied to existing BFS releases.
According to the Census Bureau: “The BFS provide timely and high frequency information on new business applications and formations in the United States. The BFS are a standard data product of the Census Bureau, developed in research collaboration with economists affiliated with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the University of Maryland, and the University of Notre Dame.”
The full BFS dataset contains twelve series—four related to business applications and eight focused on formations—and is made available every month.
