The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS), which measures business conditions and projections on an ongoing basis. The BTOS collects information that complements other economic surveys, focusing on key indicators such as revenues, employees, hours worked, and inventories.
The survey covers all employer businesses in the United States except for farms. Data is collected every two weeks to provide timely insights into the state of the economy. By gathering continuous data with geographic and subsector details, BTOS can track the effects of events like natural disasters or economic crises and help monitor recovery efforts.
The sample for BTOS includes about 1.2 million businesses. These are divided into six panels of roughly 200,000 each, with each panel reporting every 12 weeks over a year. According to the Census Bureau, it takes respondents about nine minutes on average to complete the survey.
Results from BTOS are published biweekly and broken down by sector, state, and for the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas. New questions related to artificial intelligence were introduced on November 17, 2025; results from these will be available in Spring 2026. The survey provides essential real-time data that helps local, state, and federal officials make policy decisions and assists businesses in their own economic planning.
There is no news release associated with this announcement; only a tip sheet was provided.
