Notice2026-18304
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment Request; Business Trends and Outlook Survey
Primary source
Metadata and text below are from the Federal Register, a public-domain U.S. government work. Always verify the official published version before relying on it for any legal matter.
Published
September 9, 2026
Issuing agencies
Commerce DepartmentCensus Bureau
Full Text
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<title>Federal Register, Volume 91 Issue 173 (Wednesday, September 9, 2026)</title>
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[Federal Register Volume 91, Number 173 (Wednesday, September 9, 2026)]
[Notices]
[Pages 57314-57315]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [<a href="http://www.gpo.gov">www.gpo.gov</a>]
[FR Doc No: 2026-18304]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Census Bureau
Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for Review and Approval; Comment
Request; Business Trends and Outlook Survey
The Department of Commerce will submit the following information
collection request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for
review and clearance in accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of
1995, on or after the date of publication of this notice. We invite the
general public and other Federal agencies to comment on proposed and
continuing information collections, which helps us assess the impact of
our information collection requirements and minimize the public's
reporting burden. Public comments were previously requested via the
Federal Register on December 18, 2024 (89 FR, pg. 102854-102855) during
a 60-day comment period and March 31, 2025 (90 FR, pg. 14229-14231)
during a 30-day comment period. This notice allows for an additional 30
days for public comments.
Agency: U.S. Census Bureau, Commerce Department.
Title: Business Trends and Outlook Survey.
OMB Control Number: 0607-1022.
Form Number(s): This online survey has no form number.
Type of Request: Regular submission, Request for a Revision of a
Currently Approved Collection.
Number of Responses: 396,000 (Cycles 1, 3, and 4) and 132,000
(Cycle 2).
Average Hours per Response: 10 minutes (Cycles 1, 3, and 4), 20
(Cycle 2).
Burden Hours: 110,000.
Needs and Uses: The mission of the U.S. Census Bureau (Census
Bureau) is to serve as the leading source of quality data about the
nation's people and economy; to fulfill this mission, it is necessary
to innovate to produce more detailed, more frequent, and more timely
data products. The Coronavirus pandemic was an impetus for the creation
of new data products by the Census Bureau to measure the pandemic's
impact on the economy: the Small Business Pulse Survey (SBPS) and the
weekly Business Formation Statistics. Policymakers and other federal
agency officials, media outlets, and academia commended the Census
Bureau's rapid response to their data needs during the largest economic
crisis in recent American history. The Census Bureau capitalized on the
successes that underlaid the high frequency data collection and near
real time data dissemination engineered for the SBPS by creating the
Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS).
BTOS uses ongoing data collection to produce high frequency,
timely, and granular information about current economic conditions and
trends. BTOS is the only biweekly business tendency survey produced by
the federal statistical system, providing unique and detailed data
(including during times of economic or other emergencies). The
[[Page 57315]]
BTOS target population is all nonfarm employer businesses with receipts
of $1,000 or more in the United States, the District of Columbia, and
Puerto Rico.
The current sample consists of approximately 1.2 million businesses
split into six panels. Data collection occurs every two weeks, and
businesses in each panel are asked to report once every 12 weeks for
one year. Current BTOS data are representative of all employer
businesses (excluding farms) in the U.S. economy and are published
every two weeks. The data are available at the national and state
levels, in addition to the 25 most-populous Metropolitan Statistical
Areas (MSAs). North American Industry Classification System (NAICS)
sector, subsector, and state by sector are also published, as are
employment size class, and sector by employment size class data,
according to the same timeline.
Data from BTOS are currently used to provide timely data to
understand the economic conditions being experienced by businesses;
BTOS provides near real time data on key items such as revenue, paid
employees, interest rates, and prices. A new sample collection is
conducted each year.
BTOS also provides high level information on the changing share of
businesses facing difficulties stemming from supply chain issues,
interest rate changes, or weather events. Previously, there had been
few data sources available to policymakers, media outlets, and academia
that delivered near real-time insights into economic trends and
outlooks. BTOS data has been used by the Small Business Administration
to evaluate the impact of regulatory changes.
In the approved OMB package for BTOS, the Census Bureau proposed an
incremental path to reach the full scope of BTOS. The first scope
expansion proposed adding multi-unit businesses (those with more than
one location or establishment) to BTOS. BTOS was limited in scope to
include only single-unit businesses. Despite comprising a relatively
small share of the total number of businesses, multi-unit (MU)
businesses are responsible for most of the employment, payroll, and
revenue/sales in the United States and contribute disproportionately to
economic activity. In addition, MU businesses are on average larger
than single-unit businesses. Adding these businesses helped ensure BTOS
results are representative of the full economy. The Census Bureau
proposes an incremental path to the final scope of BTOS to learn at
each implemented stage and to allow for modifications based on lessons
learned or internal/external stakeholder feedback in prior iterations.
For the first year of BTOS, the content remained unchanged at 26
questions. For the second year, the Census Bureau moved to a set of
core questions and supplemental content. Core content includes measures
of economic activity that are broadly applicable across non-farm
sectors and are important across the business cycle and during economic
or other emergencies. Core content is also complementary to key items
found on other economic surveys, such as revenues, employees, hours,
and inventories. Core items may also include concepts that may become
core topics, such as the artificial intelligence questions that started
in the second year.
Supplemental content is added to the BTOS instrument as needed and
on a periodic basis. It will be designed to provide urgently needed
data on an emerging or current issue. The supplement will include a set
of questions that perform a deeper dive into a focused topic that
requires timely data. On average, the Census Bureau estimates the
supplemental questions will impose an additional 10 minutes of burden.
Consideration for core and supplemental concepts will be based on
data consistency, how the questions performed on the current BTOS, the
results of cognitive testing, stakeholder feedback, and the ability to
collect complementary items on monthly, quarterly, annual, or census
programs to provide context and benchmarking.
For future changes, the Census Bureau will submit a request to OMB
including 30 days of public comment announced in the Federal Register
to receive approval to make any substantive revisions to the content or
methods of the proposed survey, including incremental scope changes. It
is likely new supplemental content will be chosen for each year and an
updated instrument will be submitted to OMB for review along with a 30-
day Federal Register Notice.
This submission seeks an amendment to OMB approval for three
requests. First, the Census Bureau requests approval to repeat the
artificial intelligence (AI) supplement with minor content changes.
Cognitive testing of these changes has been conducted. We are
submitting with this request the proposed AI supplemental questions.
Second, the Bureau requests approval to add a new core question about
business uncertainty. This new question has also been cognitively
tested ahead of submission. Last, the Bureau is requesting approval to
add three core questions. Two of these questions (Generative AI usage
and the impact of AI on the total number of employees) are being moved
from the AI supplement, and the third is a new question about the
impact of AI on new employees, conceptually expanding on the others.
The new question has undergone cognitive testing to determine the
finalized wording. To minimize respondent burden, the Bureau will
employ skip logic for these questions, only asking them of businesses
that report AI usage. The Bureau is also exploring ways to collect and
publish data from the AI supplement at a frequency more often than
annual, but less often than bi-weekly. This is in response to feedback
from a variety of stakeholders, and the need to paint a comprehensive
picture of the impacts of a swiftly emerging technology. Evaluation of
the respondent burden and methodological impacts are ongoing. As part
of this process, the Bureau is also looking to evaluate other AI-
related topics that may be appropriate for BTOS.
Based on cognitive testing results, the burden estimate for the
core questions is no more than 10 minutes. The AI supplements in sample
years 2 and 4 added an additional 10 minutes of burden. The new AI
supplement is estimated not to change the burden listed above.
Frequency: Bi-weekly.
Respondent's Obligation: Voluntary.
Legal Authority: Title 13 U.S.C., Sections 131 and 182.
This information collection request may be viewed at
<a href="http://www.reginfo.gov">www.reginfo.gov</a>. Follow the instructions to view the Department of
Commerce collections currently under review by OMB.
Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information
collection should be submitted within 30 days of the publication of
this notice on the following website <a href="http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain">www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain</a>.
Find this particular information collection by selecting ``Currently
under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search
function and entering either the title of the collection or the OMB
Control Number 0607-1022.
Sheleen Dumas,
Departmental PRA Compliance Officer, Office of the Under Secretary for
Economic Affairs, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2026-18304 Filed 9-8-26; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P
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