Texas Border Project
US Census Bureau – The US Census Bureau today released a new data product from Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS). This is a survey that continuously measures business conditions and forecasts. BTO contains data for multi-unit/multilocation businesses. BTO will continue to collect data that complements key items found in other economic research, such as revenue, employees, hours, and inventory.
Working from Home (WFH) Supplementary questions have been added to BTOS for one cycle (11/4/2024-1/26/2025). Existing measures of WFH reveal important data gaps in understanding its scope, particularly from a business perspective. To address this, 11 WFH questions have been developed regarding WFH share and frequency, challenges, management policies and BTOs covering business impact. These data are now available.
BTOS data represents all employer businesses in the US economy except for farms. BTO provides insight into the state of the economy by providing continuous and timely data for important economic measures every two weeks. By providing ongoing data, including Geographic and Subsector details, BTO captures the impact of events such as natural disasters and economic crises and helps to monitor recovery efforts.
The BTOS sample consists of approximately 1.2 million companies with biweekly data collection. Selected companies will be split into six panels (approximately 200,000 cases per panel) that are asked to report every 12 weeks a year. The Census Bureau estimates that it will take approximately nine minutes for the average respondent to complete the survey.
Data will be released every other week and available by sector, state, and 25 most populous metropolitan statistical sectors. The findings provide local, state and federal officials with essential data in real-time, real-time data to assist with policy making and decision-making. Additionally, information helps businesses make financial decisions.
