The U.S. Census Bureau released new data products from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) on March 26. The survey measures business conditions and projections on an ongoing basis, providing timely information about revenues, employees, hours, and inventories.
BTOS is designed to give insight into the state of the U.S. economy by delivering continuous data for key economic measures every two weeks. The survey covers all employer businesses in the country except farms, offering geographic and subsector detail that helps capture the impact of events such as natural disasters or economic crises while assisting in monitoring recovery efforts.
The BTOS sample includes about 1.2 million businesses with biweekly data collection. Selected businesses are divided into six panels of approximately 200,000 cases each; these panels report every twelve weeks over a year-long period. According to the Census Bureau, it takes an average respondent around nine minutes to complete the survey.
Survey results are released biweekly and are available by sector, state, and for the twenty-five most populous metropolitan statistical areas. New questions regarding artificial intelligence were added on November 17, 2025; their results will be published in Spring 2026.
According to the announcement, these real-time data help local, state, and federal officials make informed policy decisions while also aiding businesses with economic planning.
