[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 129 (Friday, July 5, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 55549-55550]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-14733]


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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 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: 0607-1022.
    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 Respondents: 717,600.
    Average Hours per Response: 9 minutes.
    Burden Hours: 131,600.
    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) 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 
during times of economic or other emergencies. The BTOS initial target 
population is all nonfarm, single-location 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 single-unit 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 data from 
BTOS are representative of all single location 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 single unit 
businesses; BTOS provides near real time data on key items such as 
revenue, paid employees, hours worked as well as inventories which is 
being added in for the second sample collection year; 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. Use of the BTOS data (or 
additional requirements) is being determined by the Economic 
Development Agency (EDA) to understand the impact of natural disasters 
on U.S. businesses for the EDA to then guide the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency (FEMA) and/or policymakers in assisting in economic 
recovery support missions.
    The BTOS consists of a set of core questions and supplemental 
content, when needed. The U.S. Census Bureau requests approval to add 
one question on Work from Home (WFH) schedules to the BTOS core 
content. Data collection for the BTOS core content will start August 
12, 2024.
    For 2024, the supplemental questionnaire will ask respondents about 
the business perspective on WFH. Using the same strategy as the 2023 
BTOS AI core questions, the Census Bureau hopes to field one core WFH 
question to run during all cycles in addition to the supplement. The 
core WFH question will be a yes/no question intended to capture 
potential seasonality in WFH at the business level. Having this 
baseline will be important in understanding potential seasonal patterns 
picked up in the supplemental questions; preliminary findings from 
cognitive testing suggested that seasonality could be important in 
certain industries.
    The Census Bureau plans to resubmit this package once cognitive 
testing concludes to gain approval for the WFH supplement which we plan 
to field

[[Page 55550]]

beginning in November 2024. The WFH supplement is intended to capture 
nuances in WFH from business perspective including intensity of WFH and 
factors impacting its availability.
    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 either the title of the collection or the OMB 
Control Number 0607-1022.

Mary Reuling Lenaiyasa,
Paperwork Reduction Act Program Manager, Policy Coordination Office, 
U.S. Census Bureau.
[FR Doc. 2024-14733 Filed 7-3-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P