The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), which provides ongoing measurements of business conditions and projections across the United States. The BTOS covers multiunit and multilocation businesses, complementing other economic surveys by gathering information on revenues, employees, hours worked, and inventories.
The survey is designed to represent all employer businesses in the country except for farms. It offers continuous and timely updates on key economic indicators every two weeks, providing detailed geographic and subsector breakdowns. This allows for monitoring of events such as natural disasters or economic crises and helps track recovery efforts.
About 1.2 million businesses are included in the BTOS sample. Data collection occurs biweekly, with selected companies divided into six panels—each panel contains roughly 200,000 businesses that are surveyed every 12 weeks over a year. According to the Census Bureau, respondents typically spend about nine minutes completing the survey.
Results from the BTOS are published every two weeks and can be analyzed by sector, state, and among the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas. In November 2025, questions regarding artificial intelligence were added to the survey; data from these questions will be available in 2026. Local, state, and federal officials use these results to inform policy decisions, while businesses rely on them for economic planning.
There is no accompanying news release for this announcement; only a tip sheet was provided.
