The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data products from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) on August 14, 2025. The BTOS measures business conditions and projections on an ongoing basis, now including information for businesses with multiple units or locations. According to the Census Bureau, the survey continues to collect data that complements key items from other economic surveys, such as revenues, employment figures, hours worked, and inventories.
The BTOS is designed to represent all employer businesses in the United States except farms. Its purpose is to provide ongoing and timely information about important economic indicators every two weeks. The continuous data collection includes geographic and subsector details, which allows the survey to capture how events like natural disasters or economic crises affect businesses and helps track recovery efforts.
Approximately 1.2 million businesses participate in the BTOS through a biweekly data collection process. These selected businesses are divided into six panels of about 200,000 cases each; each panel is asked to report every twelve weeks for a year. The Census Bureau states it takes respondents an average of nine minutes to complete the survey after reviewing instructions.
Data from BTOS will be released every two weeks and will be available by sector, state, and for the 25 most populous metropolitan statistical areas in the country. Survey results are intended to provide essential real-time data that help local, state, and federal officials make informed policy decisions while also assisting businesses with their own economic planning.
No formal news release accompanied this announcement; instead, it was issued as a tip sheet.
