The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), an ongoing survey that tracks business conditions and projections in the United States. The BTOS gathers information from multiunit and multilocation businesses, complementing other economic surveys by collecting data on revenues, employees, hours worked, and inventories.
According to the Census Bureau, the BTOS covers all employer businesses in the country except farms. It provides regular updates every two weeks on key economic measures, offering detailed insights by geography and industry subsector. This allows for tracking of how events such as natural disasters or economic crises affect businesses and supports monitoring of recovery efforts.
The survey’s sample includes about 1.2 million businesses, with data collection organized into six panels of roughly 200,000 cases each. Each panel is surveyed every 12 weeks over a year. The agency estimates that it takes participants around nine minutes to complete the survey.
Results are published biweekly and can be broken down by sector, state, and among the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas. In November 2025, new questions regarding artificial intelligence were introduced; findings related to these questions will be available in 2026. The survey aims to provide local, state, and federal officials with timely data for policymaking as well as support business decision-making processes.
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