The U.S. Census Bureau has published new data from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), a program that regularly measures business conditions and future expectations in the United States. The BTOS gathers information from multiunit and multilocation businesses, offering data on topics such as revenues, employment, hours worked, and inventories.
The survey is designed to represent all employer businesses across the U.S. economy, with the exception of farms. Data collection occurs every two weeks and covers key economic indicators at national, state, sectoral, and metropolitan levels. This approach allows for monitoring how events like natural disasters or economic downturns affect businesses and helps track recovery efforts.
About 1.2 million businesses are included in the BTOS sample. These are divided into six panels of roughly 200,000 each; each panel is surveyed every 12 weeks over a year. According to the Census Bureau, it takes an average of nine minutes for respondents to complete the survey.
The biweekly release schedule provides timely updates for local, state, and federal officials who use this information for policy decisions. Businesses also rely on these results when making their own economic choices. New questions about artificial intelligence were introduced on November 17 and are expected to be part of future data releases in 2026.
There is no formal news release accompanying this announcement; only a tip sheet was provided by the Census Bureau.
