The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), which tracks business conditions and projections on an ongoing basis. The survey includes information from multiunit and multilocation businesses, offering data that complements other economic surveys by covering revenues, employees, hours, and inventories.
BTOS covers all employer businesses in the United States except for farms. It provides continuous and timely data every two weeks with detailed geographic and subsector breakdowns. This approach allows BTOS to capture the effects of events such as natural disasters or economic crises, helping to monitor recovery efforts.
The survey sample includes about 1.2 million businesses, 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 respondents about nine minutes on average to complete the survey.
Data will be released biweekly and will be available by sector, state, and for the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country. These results provide local, state, and federal officials with real-time information useful for policymaking and decision-making. Businesses can also use this information to inform their own economic decisions.
No separate news release was issued alongside this announcement; only a tip sheet was provided.
