The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data products from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), a tool that measures ongoing business conditions and projections across the United States. The BTOS collects information on revenues, employees, hours, inventories, and now includes data for businesses with multiple locations.
The survey represents all employer businesses in the U.S. economy except farms. It aims to provide continuous and timely data every two weeks, offering insights into key economic measures. The BTOS is designed to help track how events such as natural disasters or economic crises affect businesses and to support monitoring of recovery efforts.
About 1.2 million businesses participate in the BTOS through biweekly data collection. These businesses are divided into six panels of approximately 200,000 cases each, with each panel reporting every 12 weeks over a year. According to the Census Bureau, it takes an average respondent about nine minutes to complete the survey.
Data from BTOS will be available by sector, state, and for the 25 most populous metropolitan statistical areas. The results are intended to give local, state, and federal officials essential real-time information for policymaking and decision-making purposes. Businesses can also use these insights when making their own economic decisions.
No separate news release was issued with this announcement; it was distributed as a tip sheet only.
