Today, the Census Bureau and Social Explorer announce the launch of Census Explorer: Retail Edition. This latest version of the Census Bureau's interactive map gives users easier access to neighborhood statistics and shows the geographic concentration of electronic shopping and mail-order houses. You can also share and embed the maps you create. (Prior editions of Census Explorer showcased American Community Survey data and transportation trends.)

Drawn from the 2007 and 2012 County Business Patterns surveys, the new data provides the only detailed annual information on the number of establishments, employees and payroll for nearly 1,200 industries at the national, state and county levels.

Reversing a four-year decline, the data show that the total number of U.S. businesses with paid employees grew by more than 77,000 establishments to 7.4 million in 2012, an increase of 1.1 percent from 2011.

The greatest employment increases in electronic shopping and mail-order houses were concentrated in counties within Southern California, the New York metro area, Chicago metro area, and other metro areas such as Memphis, Tenn. (Shelby County), Las Vegas (Clark County), Grand Rapids, Mich. (Kent County), Columbus, Ohio (Franklin County) and Minneapolis (Hennepin County). In addition, two counties in North Carolina (Guilford and Wake, home of Greensboro and Raleigh, respectively) and one in Missouri (Clay, near Kansas City) also had large gains in employment for this industry.

Read more about the Census Bureau findings here, and dive into more data and visuals with Social Explorer's premium mapping and reporting tools.