That data is fed into the economic models to normalize anonymized QuickBooks customer data against the official data. the Index shows the number of people employed by businesses with one to nine employees in the previous month and how that number has changed since the month before.

Data insights are available at national, regional, state  and sector levels; based on a sample of almost 333,000 businesses.  Intuit said the ability to compare with QB Online Payroll makes data insights available of up to nine months earlier than from the official statistics.