The Census Bureau released some new statistics from the American Community Survey last week on immigrants.  Buried in the data is information on self-employed among non-native born individuals in the United States.  I haven't had time to pull out specifically yet for all groups.  I did, however, take notice of a couple of interesting findings related to education/occupation of some different groups, most notably this statement from their release: "U.S. residents born in India have the highest percentage of civilian-employed people working in management, professional and related occupations (69 percent). These occupations employ about 36 percent of the native civilian-employed U.S. population and 27 percent of the foreign-born."  

Additionally last week I came across a new working paper on immigrant entrepreneurs that makes use of a new data source for studying immigrant entrepreneurs in the United States, the New Immigrant Survey.  What I love about this piece is that it's the first data that I am aware of which is actually able to look at individual entrepreneur backgrounds of new immigrants in the United States and to bring in their home country job experience prior to immigration.  

• Akee, Randall, Jaeger, David A. and Tatsiramos, Konstantinos,The Persistence of Self-Employment Across Borders: New Evidence on Legal Immigrants to the United States. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1136412 

Other recent studies have tried to compare self-employment among specific immigrant populations in the United States and in their home country.

• Fairlie, Robert W. and Woodruff, Christopher M.,Mexican Entrepreneurship: A Comparison of Self-Employment in Mexico and the United States(March 2006). IZA Discussion Paper No. 2039. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=892841
   

And this study tries to look at the effect of immigrant self-employment upon native born self-employment.

• Fairlie, Robert W. and Meyer, Bruce D.,The Effect of Immigration on Native Self-Employment. NBER Working Paper No. W7561. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=217548

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is used by business and government to classify and measure economic activity in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The Office of Management and Budget’s Economic Classification Policy Committee (ECPC) announced today it is soliciting proposals from the public for changes to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) structure and content to be included in a potential 2012 revision. 

If you are interested in collaborating on comments about NAICS, in particular, comments about new industries, please contact me.  The Kauffman Foundation along with a coalition of other partners will likely be submitting some recommendations.