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 covers all employer businesses in the United States, except for farms, and includes information from multiunit or multilocation companies.
The BTOS is designed to provide timely data on key economic indicators such as revenues, employees, hours worked, and inventories. Data are collected every two weeks from a sample of about 1.2 million businesses. These businesses are divided into six panels of approximately 200,000 each, with each panel reporting once every 12 weeks over the course of a year. According to the Census Bureau, it takes an average respondent about nine minutes to complete the survey.
Results from the BTOS are released biweekly and are available by sector, state, and for the 25 largest metropolitan statistical areas. The continuous nature of this data collection allows for monitoring the effects of events like natural disasters or economic crises and helps track recovery efforts. Local, state, and federal officials use these results to inform policy decisions, while businesses can use them to guide their own economic planning.
There was no accompanying news release with this announcement; only a tip sheet was provided.
