We construct a new micro-dataset of U.S. export transactions at the plant level by mapping confidential firm-level exports to their underlying establishments. These data provide new facts about the geography of U.S. exports both across and within states, with important practical applications to empirical work linking trade to local labor market outcomes. The data reveal U.S. exports to be much more geographically concentrated than both employment and manufacturing sales. Motivated by this fact, the paper applies these data to study the effects of exporting on local labor markets during the trade collapse of the Great Recession. Counties experiencing greater declines in foreign demand performed worse in terms of employment, pay, and wages during the Great Recession. We also show that a similar analysis with imputed export data—a common practice in the literature—fails to replicate these estimates.

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