The US Census Bureau recorded an apparent boom in human cloud, ride-sharing drivers. Last week, the agency announced that the number of “nonemployer establishments” in the “Taxi and Limousine Service” industry — which includes drivers for human cloud/ride-sharing firms such as Uber and Lyft — rose by 45.9% in 2016 from the previous year.

A nonemployer establishment is one that has no paid employees, has annual business receipts of $1,000 or more per year and is subject to federal taxes.

There were 220,261 establishments in 2016.

States with the highest growth in nonemployer establishments included California, up 43.7%; Florida, up 72.3%; and New York, up 19.7%.

The source of the Census Bureau’s nonemployee data is primarily from annual or quarterly business income tax returns filed with the IRS.

These findings appear after the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report that independent contractors as a percentage of the US workforce fell between 2005 and 2017. However, the BLS research included only those who said working as a contingent worker represented the primary source of their income.