The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), which tracks business conditions and projections across the United States. The survey includes information from multiunit and multilocation businesses, aiming to provide ongoing measurements of key economic indicators such as revenues, employment, hours worked, and inventories.
BTOS is designed to represent all employer businesses in the country except for farms. It delivers continuous data every two weeks with details by geography and industry subsector. This approach allows BTOS to capture how events like natural disasters or economic downturns affect businesses and helps monitor recovery efforts.
Approximately 1.2 million businesses are included in the BTOS sample, with biweekly data collection cycles. These businesses are divided into six panels of about 200,000 each, reporting every 12 weeks over a year. According to the Census Bureau, it takes respondents around nine minutes on average to complete the survey.
Data will be made available every two weeks by sector, state, and for the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas. The results are intended to support local, state, and federal officials with timely information for policy decisions and also assist businesses in their own planning.
There was no formal news release associated with this announcement; only a tip sheet was provided.
