[Federal Register Volume 87, Number 38 (Friday, February 25, 2022)]
[Notices]
[Pages 10770-10771]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2022-04060]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Census Bureau


Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the 
Office of Management and Budget 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 November 9, 2021 during a 60-day comment period. 
This notice allows for an additional 30 days for public comments.
    Agency: U.S. Census Bureau.
    Title: Business Trends and Outlook Survey.
    OMB Control Number: 0607-XXXX.
    Form Number(s) The electronic survey instrument has no form number.
    Type of Request: Regular submission, New Information Collection 
Request.
    Number of Respondents: We expect 45,000 responses every two weeks 
for a total of 1,170,000 responses annually.
    Average Hours per Response: 8 minutes.
    Burden Hours: 156,000.
    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; in order 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) (OMB Number: 0607-1014) 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 proposes to capitalize on the successes that 
underlie the current high frequency data collection and near real time 
data dissemination that have been engineered for the SBPS. The proposed 
Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) will be an ongoing collection 
that will allow for high frequency, timely, and granular information 
about current economic conditions and trends as well as the impact of 
national, subnational, or sector-level shocks on business activity. The 
proposed BTOS will also allow the Census Bureau a mechanism for 
providing more detailed data during times of economic or other 
emergencies. Thus, the Census Bureau is requesting three years of 
approval from OMB to conduct the BTOS.
    The BTOS will increase the scope of the Small Business Pulse Survey 
to include large employer businesses (those with 500 or more 
employees), multi-unit businesses (those with establishments in more 
than one location), and nonemployer businesses (those with no paid 
employees); it will also include the U.S. Island Areas in addition to 
Puerto Rico. As with the SBPS, the BTOS will include most non-farm 
sectors of the U.S. economy. The BTOS will incrementally build on the 
success of the SBPS and will be implemented using components of the 
current SBPS platform. The first stage of the BTOS will be an expansion 
of the SBPS to include the addition of large single unit employer 
businesses, to be followed by the addition of multi-unit businesses, 
and then nonemployer businesses. The BTOS will ultimately produce high 
frequency statistics across most non-farm sectors of the U.S. economy, 
with estimates by sector, state, state by sector, sub-sector, the 
largest fifty Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) by population size, 
employment size, and employer status. As with other Census Bureau data 
products, detailed methodology and measures of quality will be 
published for BTOS data products. BTOS products will be based on 
representative samples drawn from the full universe of businesses, 
making them unique and the results reliable when compared to other high 
frequency business survey data such as those produced in the private 
sector.
    The Census Bureau proposes an incremental path to the proposed 
final scope of the BTOS in order to learn at each implemented stage and 
to allow for modifications based on lessons learned or internal/
external stakeholder feedback in prior iterations. 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 the incremental scope changes discussed above.
    The Census Bureau published a notice in the Federal Register on 
November 9, 2021 soliciting public comments on our plans to conduct the 
BTOS. That notice referred to the survey as the Business Pulse Survey. 
The name of the survey has since been changed to Business Trends and 
Outlook Survey with the acronym BTOS. That earlier notice also included 
an estimate of 6 minutes to complete the survey. We have since revised 
that estimate to 8 minutes.
    The BTOS will be a new survey with bi-weekly data collection and 
publication; estimates produced from the BTOS will initially be 
released as experimental data products. The SBPS demonstrated the 
ability of the Census Bureau to collect and publish high frequency, 
timely data during a national economic emergency. The BTOS will 
capitalize on this success and provide regularly occurring high 
frequency data products and measures of quality based on national and 
subnational

[[Page 10771]]

representative samples using transparent methodology. The BTOS will 
produce data continuously, in part as a response to feedback on the 
SBPS that longer time series would have been useful to contextualize 
the pandemic impact. Continuous data will allow for the measurement of 
economic trends during all phases of the business cycle as well as 
during times of economic and other emergencies. The BTOS will uniquely 
provide the ability to produce these data and associated measures of 
quality.
    The BTOS data series will provide insight on the state of the 
economy, prior to and during an event (including but not limited to 
natural disasters or economic crises) and will assist in monitoring the 
recovery from the event. It will also be useful in understanding 
aggregate and subaggregate changes in economic trends throughout the 
business cycle. BTOS data may be used by elected officials, government 
program officials, policy makers, industry leaders, economic and social 
analysts, business entrepreneurs, business and economic news 
organizations, and domestic and foreign researchers in academia, 
business, and government.
    The BTOS will allow for a large number of data products that are 
complementary to the Census Bureau's existing monthly and quarterly 
economic indicator programs which provide estimates of contemporaneous 
economic activity at the national sector level. The BTOS will produce 
complementary disaggregate contemporaneous data as well as data that 
reflect the outlook of businesses. The BTOS will be complementary to 
the Census Bureau's existing annual programs, serving as a platform 
through which trends and data gaps may first be identified for 
subsequent inclusion in annual programs.
    The BTOS instrument will include core and supplemental content. 
Core content will form the basis of the instrument and run 
continuously; core content will include measures of economic activity 
that are applicable across all non-farm sectors and are important 
across the business cycle and during economic or other emergencies. 
Supplemental content will be included on the instrument with a regular 
periodicity and will be designed to provide urgently needed data on an 
emerging or current issue.
    Core concepts for the BTOS will be selected based on research and 
analysis conducted during the SBPS, stakeholder feedback, and the 
ability to collect complementary items on monthly, quarterly, annual, 
or census programs to provide context and benchmarking.
    Initially, all data products will be accessible through the Census 
Bureau's Experimental Data Products site. Experimental data products 
are clearly identified and include methodology and supporting research 
with their release.
    Affected Public: Business or other for-profit organizations.
    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 
www.reginfo.gov. 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 www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. 
Find this particular information collection by selecting ``Currently 
under 30-day Review--Open for Public Comments'' or by using the search 
function and entering the title of the collection.

Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Chief Information 
Officer, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2022-04060 Filed 2-24-22; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P