Private company data or over 42M US companies

What is BrightQuery?

BrightQuery builds company data entirely from US government filings rather than surveys, scraped websites, or investor-facing disclosures. It draws on records from the IRS, SEC, Department of Labor, and state business registries to construct a point-in-time history of financials, employment, and ownership for both public and private companies.

‍

What academic researchers should know about BrightQuery private company data

On Dewey, BrightQuery publishes company-level financial and employment data covering all 42 million active US companies, most of which are small and medium-sized private businesses outside the reach of standard public company databases. Company Benchmarking aggregates financials and employment by NAICS industry and sector at the national, state, and CBSA level since 2010. Industry Statistics breaks company financials down further by revenue range and reports monthly new company formation counts by state. Occupational Wage Data covers wage statistics for more than 800 occupations by industry and metro area. Delaware Stock Filings tracks capital structure, authorized shares, and corporate events for the roughly 275,000 private companies with an ultimate parent incorporated in Delaware, which BrightQuery estimates make up about two thirds of large companies. Public Company Benefits and Financials and SBA Loans round out the offering with firmographic, benefit plan, and SBA loan data for public companies and loan recipients. Every dataset can be joined on a common BQ_ID.

‍

Why academic researchers choose BrightQuery on Dewey

Compustat and similar sources remain the standard for public company financials, but they leave out the millions of private businesses that make up most of the US economy. BrightQuery fills that gap with government sourced, point-in-time data that avoids the survivorship bias of databases that overwrite old records, so researchers can track a company's financials, headcount, or ownership as they actually stood at each filing date rather than as later revised. Because the data comes from mandatory filings rather than self-reporting, it holds up for research on private firm behavior, labor markets, and regional economies that would otherwise depend on survey data or a public company sample. It pairs naturally with other Dewey partners for labor market research: LinkUp for real-time job postings, People Data Labs for an independent firmographic cross-check, and WARN Layoff Data for mass layoff events at the same companies.

‍

BrightQuery academic research ideas and use cases

• Pay transparency and pay gaps. Ferdinand Bratek and April Klein at NYU, with Yanting Shi at HEC Paris, used BrightQuery's data alongside EEO-1 workforce disclosures in a paper published in the S&P Global Market Intelligence Paper Series, finding that pay gaps widen with firm size and that investors did not penalize firms for disclosing them.
• Private firm behavior versus public firms. Because BrightQuery covers both public and private companies on the same schema, researchers can compare financial and employment outcomes for otherwise similar firms that differ only in whether they are publicly traded.
• Small business formation and lending. New Company Formations and the SBA Loans datasets support research on how new business formation and SBA lending activity move together across states and industries, including through recessions and recoveries.
• Regional and industry labor economics. Occupational Wage Data and Industry Statistics, broken out by metro area, industry, and revenue range, support research on wage dispersion, industry concentration, and how local labor markets differ from national averages.

‍