Market Update: Survey of Business Uncertainty – Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta – Full Analysis

De-identified SBU microdata is now available for use by external researchers. Please complete the request form.

Latest Results as SBU Monthly Report:

Special Questions Archive:

macroblog articles:

• Hybrid Working Arrangements: Who Decides? January 12, 2022
• Onboarding Remote Workers: A Hassle? Maybe. A Barrier? No. July 15, 2021
• WFH Is Onstage and Here to Stay February 24, 2021
• “COVID, Election Uncertainty Weigh Heavily on Firms’ Outlook,” October 22, 2020
• “Post-COVID Recovery? Not So Fast, My Friend,” October 1, 2020
• “Firms Anticipate COVID-19 Uncertainty to Persist, but Not Worsen”, September 2, 2020
• “Businesses Anticipate Slashing Postpandemic Travel Budgets,” August 4, 2020
• “COVID Won’t Kill Demand for Office Space,” July 10, 2020
• “Firms Do Not Anticipate Regaining Pre-COVID Employment Levels through 2021,” July 8, 2020
• “Seven in 10 Firms Sought Financial Help during the COVID-19 Crisis,” June 18, 2020
• “Firms Expect Working from Home to Triple,” May 28, 2020
• “U.S. Firms Foresee Intensifying Coronavirus Impact,” May 4, 2020
• “COVID-19 Caused 3 New Hires for Every 10 Layoffs,” May 1, 2020
• “American Firms Foresee a Huge Negative Impact of the Coronavirus,” March 23, 2020
• “New Evidence Points to Mounting Trade Policy Effects on U.S. Business Activity,” November 1, 2019
• “Tariff Worries and U.S. Business Investment, Take Two,” February 25, 2019
• “Are Tariff Worries Cutting into Business Investment?” August 7, 2018
• ?”Now“What Are Businesses Saying about Tax Reform March 23, 2018
• “What Businesses Said about Tax Reform,” January 17, 2018

Latest Research

• Brent H. Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, “Where Managers and Employees Disagree About Remote Work”, Harvard Business Review, 5 January 2023.
• José Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Brent Meyer, and Emil Mihaylov, “The Shift to Remote Work Lessens Wage-Growth Pressures”, FRBA Working Paper 2022-7, July 2022.
• Brent H. Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, Jose Maria Barrero, Steven J. Davis, David Altig & Nicholas Bloom, “Pandemic-Era Uncertainty”, NBER Working Paper 29958, April 2022.
• Philip Bunn, David E. Altig, Lena Anayi, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven Davis, Brent Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites. COVID-19 uncertainty: A tale of two tails. VoxEU.org, 16 November 2021
• Lena Anayi, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Phillip Bunn, Steven Davis, Julia Leather, Brent Meyer, Myrto Oikonomou, Emil Mihaylov, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites. Labour market reallocation in the wake of Covid-19. VoxEU.org, 13 August 2021
• Barrero, Jose Maria. “The micro and macro of managerial beliefs.” Forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics. June 2021
• Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, “Why Working From Home Will Stick”, NBER Working Paper 28731, April 2021.
• David E. Altig, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Brent Meyer, and Emil Mihaylov, “Employers Say Remote Work Will Remain in Their Plans”, Chicago Booth Review, March 4, 2021.
• Barrero, J M, N Bloom, S J Davis, and B Meyer (2021), “COVID-19 is a Persistent Reallocation Shock”, AEA Papers and Proceedings 111: 287-91
• Brent H. Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, Steven J. Davis, Nicholas Parker, David Altig, Jose Maria Barrero, and Nick Bloom. “Pandemic-Era Uncertainty on Main Street and Wall Street” (December 2020)
• Jose Maria Barrero and Nick Bloom. “Economic Uncertainty and the Recovery” (August 2020). Prepared for the 2020 Jackson Hole Symposium.
• D. Altig, S. Baker, J.M. Barrero, et al., “Economic uncertainty before and during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Journal of Public Economics, Volume 191, November 2020.
• José María Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis, “COVID-19 Is Also a Reallocation Shock”, Research Briefs in Economic Policy No. 232, September 16, 2020.
• David Altig, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis, Brent Meyer, Nicholas Parker, “Surveying business uncertainty,” Journal of Econometrics, September 2020.
• David E. Altig, Scott Baker, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Scarlet Chen, Steven Davis, Julia Leather, Brent Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, Paul Mizen, Nicholas Parker, Thomas Renault, Pawel Smietanka, Gregory Thwaites, “Economic uncertainty in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic”, 24 July 2020.
• Dave Altig, Scott Brent Baker, Jose Maria Barrero, Nick Bloom, Phil Bunn, Scarlet Chen, Steven J. Davis, Brent Meyer, Emil Mihaylov, Paul Mizen, Nick Parker, Thomas Renault, Pawel Smietanka, and Greg Thwaites, “Economic Uncertainty before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Atlanta Fed Working Paper 2020-9, July 2020.
• José María Barrero, Nick Bloom, and Steven J. Davis. “COVID-19 is also a reallocation shock,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, June 25, 2020.
• Rebecca Stropoli, “COVID-19 Will End Some Jobs, and Transform Others”, Chicago Booth Review, May 22, 2020.
• Steven J. Davis, “Trade Policy Is Upending Markets—but Not Investment“, Chicago Booth Review, March 18, 2019.

Technical information about the SBU:

Related surveys and data:

Dave Altig

Dave Altig
is executive vice president and chief economic adviser at the Federal
Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He serves on the executive leadership team for the
Bank’s economic mobility and resilience strategic priority, is an executive
cosponsor of the Working Families Employee Resource Network, and is an
adviser to the executive leadership committee.

Jose Maria Barrero

Jose Maria Barrero is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Instituto
Tecnológico Autónomo de México, where he conducts
empirical and quantitative research in macroeconomics and finance, focusing
on firm behavior under uncertainty. He joined the SBU research team while he
was a PhD student at Stanford University. He holds a BA in Economics and
Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and an MA and PhD in
Economics from Stanford University.

Nicholas (Nick) Bloom

Nick Bloom
is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a codirector of the
Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship program at the National Bureau
of Economic Research. His research focuses on management practices and
uncertainty. He previously worked at the U.K. Treasury and McKinsey &
Company. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Cambridge University, a master’s
degree from Oxford University, and a PhD from University College London.

Steven J. Davis

Steven J. Davis is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a senior fellow at the
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), and professor
emeritus at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His research
focuses on labor market outcomes, business performance, economic
fluctuations, and uncertainty. He is an elected fellow of the Society of
Labor Economists, former editor of the
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, economic adviser to the
U.S. Congressional Budget Office, and senior fellow with the Asian Bureau of
Finance and Economics Research. He is also a co-creator of the Economic
Policy Uncertainty Indices, and he co-organizes the Asian Monetary Policy
Forum, held annually in Singapore. Davis received a PhD in economics from
Brown University in 1986 and joined the Booth faculty in 1985.

Brent Meyer

Brent Meyer
is an assistant vice president and economist in the research department at
the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. His primary research interests include
firm behavior, survey methods, inflation, inflation expectations,
macroeconomics, and monetary policy. In addition to providing monetary
policy support, Meyer heads up our
Economic Survey Research Center (ESRC), is involved in research using our Business Inflation Expectations (BIE),
Survey of Business Uncertainty (SBU), and CFO surveys, contributes to the
Atlanta Fed’s
Inflation Project, and to the Atlanta Fed’s
macroblog, which provides commentary on economic topics, including monetary policy,
macroeconomic developments, and the Southeast economy. Meyer earned a
bachelor’s degree in economics from Hillsdale College and a master’s degree
in economics from Bowling Green State University.

Kevin Foster 

Kevin Foster is a Survey Director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He
has been leading survey efforts in the Federal Reserve System since 2009,
and before that at the United States Census Bureau starting in 2004. Foster
contributes to policy and research through his roles on the Survey &
Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, the Business Inflation Expectations
survey, and the Survey of Business Uncertainty. 

Emil Mihaylov

Emil Mihaylov is a Quantitative Research Analysis Specialist at the Federal
Reserve Bank in Atlanta. He has been responsible for analyzing the SBU data
since 2019. His other areas of research include macroeconomics, forecasting,
and data and statistical analysis.

Grace Guynn

Grace Guynn is a survey manager in the Research Department at the Federal
Reserve Bank of Atlanta. She is responsible for leading survey operations
for the Economic Survey Research Center, including the recruitment and
retention of business leaders in the Survey of Business Uncertainty (SBU),
the CFO Survey and Business Inflation Expectations Survey (BIE).

Past Contributor

Mike Bryan

Michael Bryan was a vice president and senior economist in the research
department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, where he was responsible
for organizing the Atlanta Fed’s monetary policy process. He came to
the Atlanta Fed in 2008, and retired from there in 2016. Before coming to
Atlanta, Bryan was at the Cleveland Fed, where he had spent 30 years in
positions of increasing responsibility. Bryan is currently serving on the
faculty of the University of South Carolina.

Lead Coordinators

Avery Best
John Brumbaugh
Sage Crittenden
Madeline Fiebig
Joseph Gomez
Matias Gonzalez
Charles Jones
Aidan McNew
Isa Padilla
Annemarie Rosebrock
Brooke Smith
Cordelia Tranfield
Garrett Warner
Micah Xu

Panel Coordinators

Madeline Fiebig
Natalie Forman
Jane Kresnadi
Sarah Lepkowitz
Kelley Lu
Jayne Beth Martin
Emma McAleese
Kaylie Milton
Kali Morton
Sakib Mowla
Delia Neufeld
Isa Padilla
Annemarie Rosebrock
Lars Rostad
Roshni Sangani
Abigail Shi
Brooke Smith
Sasha Stanley
Luke Thorell
Maxwell Tingom
Trisha Vemulapalli
Garrett Warner
Eric Wenz
Adam Whalen
Micah Xu

Why do we conduct this survey?

The SBU elicits a 5-point probability distribution over 12-month-ahead sales, and employment for each firm. It also elicits current values of these quantities. The survey’s innovative design allows the calculation of each firm’s expected growth rate over the next year and its degree of uncertainty about its expectations. Policy makers and researchers can use SBU data to help forecast economic activity and better understand how business expectations and uncertainty affect employment, sales, investment, and other economic outcomes.

For information on how the Atlanta Fed handles participant data from this survey, please refer to our online privacy policy.

The Survey of Business Uncertainty Partnership

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta fields the Survey of Business Uncertainty in partnership with Steven Davis of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Nick Bloom of Stanford University. Davis and Bloom are the creators of the Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) indices and experts in the field.

For Technical Information about the SBU

Please consult “Surveying Business Uncertainty” by David Altig, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Mike Bryan, Steven J. Davis, Brent H. Meyer, and Nicholas Parker. Additional information about the methods used for the survey can be found in the accompanying slide deck.

Sample Survey Forms

Panel members are split evenly into two groups. A given panel member will rotate between the sales revenue and employment forms, responding to each questionnaire every other month. In addition to the core survey questions posed in the forms below, we typically ask at least one special question each month.

Survey Release Dates

The Survey of Business Uncertainty will be released by 11 a.m. ET on the following dates:

2026

January 28
February 25
March 25
April 29
May 27
June 24
July 29
August 26
September 30
October 28
November 25
December 30