[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 168 (Thursday, August 29, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 70165-70166]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-19410]



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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, Department of Commerce.
    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: 795,000.
    Average Hours per Response: 10 minutes.
    Burden Hours: 132,500.
    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 
during times of economic or other emergencies. The 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, hours worked as well as inventories which was 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. The use of the BTOS data 
(or additional requirements) is still being determined by the Economic 
Development Agency (EDA) to understand the impact of natural disasters 
on U.S. businesses. The EDA will then guide the Federal Emergency 
Management Agency (FEMA) and/or policymakers in assisting in economic 
recovery support missions.
    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 still 
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

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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.
    The Census Bureau is requesting the addition of a new question to 
the core set. This question expands on an existing core question that 
currently asks whether the business experienced any monetary issues due 
to an extreme weather event. The new question will ask about the type 
of extreme weather event, offering thirteen different options plus a 
write-in choice. This new question will only be asked if the response 
to the previous question indicates that monetary issues were 
experienced. The addition of this question aims to enhance our 
understanding of how various weather-related events impact business 
operations, including identifying specific weather disruptions and 
associated financial losses. This change was requested by the Small 
Business Administration.
    In 2024, the second supplemental questionnaire will address work-
from-home (WFH) from the business perspective. Similar to the 2023 BTOS 
core questions on artificial intelligence (AI), a core WFH question 
will be included in all cycles. This core question will be a yes/no 
format designed to capture potential seasonal variations in WFH at the 
business level. Establishing this baseline is crucial for understanding 
seasonal patterns, as preliminary cognitive testing indicated that 
seasonality could significantly affect certain industries.
    The Coronavirus pandemic emphasized the importance of remote work 
for economic continuity. Post-pandemic, work from home (WFH) remains 
significant in many workplaces but its extent at businesses and 
businesses' plans for the future of remote work are not measured in a 
timely fashion. Currently, WFH data from a worker perspective is 
available through 2024 via the Current Population Survey (CPS), but 
business-level data is only available through 2022 from the Business 
Response Survey (BRS), which is currently on hiatus. Results from the 
Annual Business Survey through 2022 will be released in fall 2024. 
Timely measures of WFH from the business perspective will be valuable 
to policymakers at all levels due to its potential impact on housing 
markets, commercial real estate, and urban planning.
    For sample year 3, we propose changes to the content as detailed in 
Attachments A and B of the Information Collection Request (ICR) 
submitted to OMB for review. Attachment A outlines the core questions 
for cycles 2 through 4 and includes the core plus supplemental content 
for cycle 2. Based on cognitive testing results, the burden estimate 
for the core questions has increased from approximately 9 minutes to 10 
minutes. The WFH supplement is estimated to add an additional 10 
minutes of burden to the core questions.
    Frequency: Bi-weekly.
    Respondent's Obligation: Voluntary.
    Legal Authority: Title 13 U.S.C. 131 and 182.
    This information collection request may be viewed at https://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 https://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.

Sheleen Dumas,
Department PRA Clearance Officer, Office of the Under Secretary for 
Economic Affairs, Commerce Department.
[FR Doc. 2024-19410 Filed 8-28-24; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 3510-07-P