The U.S. Census Bureau has released new data from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) as of December 31, 2025. The BTOS is designed to measure business conditions and projections across the United States on an ongoing basis, with a focus on multiunit and multilocation businesses.
The survey provides data that complements other economic surveys by including information about revenues, employees, hours worked, and inventories. It covers all employer businesses in the country except for farms.
BTOS collects data every two weeks from a sample of about 1.2 million businesses. These are divided into six panels of approximately 200,000 each, with each panel asked to report every 12 weeks over the course of a year. According to the Census Bureau, “The Census Bureau estimates it takes the average respondent approximately nine minutes to complete the survey, including the time for reviewing the instructions and answers.”
Data collected through BTOS are made available biweekly by sector, state, and for the 25 most populous metropolitan statistical areas. New questions focusing on artificial intelligence were added to the survey on November 17; results from these questions will be released in 2026.
According to information provided by the agency: “Survey results give local, state and federal officials essential, real-time data to aid in policymaking and decision-making. In addition, the information aids businesses in making economic decisions.”
BTOS aims to provide timely insights into key economic measures while also offering geographic and subsector detail. This enables tracking of how events such as natural disasters or economic crises affect different parts of the economy and supports monitoring recovery efforts.
There was no formal news release associated with this announcement; only a tip sheet was provided.
