Business insights and impact on the UK economy: 24 July 2025

• More than one in seven (15%) trading businesses reported that their turnover had increased in June 2025 compared with the previous calendar month, while 51% reported their turnover stayed the same and 24% reported it had decreased; all of these have been broadly stable since April. 

• Around one in five (19%) trading businesses reported that they expect their turnover to decrease in August 2025, up 4 percentage points from expectations for July; this is similar to movements seen between July and August in both 2023 and 2024. 

• Economic uncertainty continued to be the most-reported challenge affecting turnover for trading businesses in early July 2025 at 29%, broadly stable with early June; for businesses with 10 or more employees, the most-reported challenge was still the cost of labour at 36%, though this is down 4 percentage points over the same period. 

• For trading businesses with 10 or more employees, 15% reported they expect to raise the prices of goods or services they sell in August 2025; this is down 3 percentage points from expectations for July and is the lowest proportion reported since November 2024. 

• Around two in five (40%) trading businesses with 10 or more employees reported that they are not considering raising their prices in August 2025, the highest proportion reported since December 2024; for those businesses that are considering raising prices, the most-reported reason for doing so was labour costs (40%), which is the lowest proportion reported since December 2024. 

• In July 2025, 9% of businesses reported that they were currently experiencing worker shortages, which has been broadly stable since early August 2023; for businesses with 10 or more employees, the proportion was higher at 17%, which has been broadly stable since early September 2024. 

The data presented in this bulletin are the final results from Wave 136 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), which was live from 7 to 20 July 2025. 

Data reported within BICS bulletins and datasets are estimates that are subject to uncertainty, for example, sampling variability and non-sampling error. Further information on quality is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey Quality and Methodology Information (QMI), and we regularly update confidence intervals associated with the survey questions. 

Single-site weighted regional estimates up to Wave 130 are available in our Business insights and impact on the UK subnational single-site economy: May 2025 article. 

More about economy, business and jobs 

• Explore the latest trends in employment, prices and trade in our economic dashboard. 

• View all economic data. 

The percentage of businesses that reported they were trading in July 2025 was 95%, with 84% fully trading, and 11% partially trading (for example, trading with reduced hours or staff numbers). Meanwhile, 3% of businesses reported "temporarily paused trading", and 2% reported "permanently ceased trading" as their business's trading status.

Access to microdata 

You can access the microdata for Waves 1 to 135 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) through the Secure Research Service (SRS). The BICS microdata for each wave are released on a rolling basis in the week following the publication of each wave. The microdata are made confidential and do not disclose information on any specific business. 

Only researchers accredited under the Digital Economy Act, as explained on the UK Statistics Authority website are able to access data in the SRS. You can apply for researcher accreditation using the People and Projects Service (PPS).For more information, please see our guidance on the Integrated Data Service (IDS) website .

To conduct analysis with microdata from the SRS, a project application must be submitted to the Research Accreditation Panel (RAP), as explained on the UK Statistics Authority website. Project accreditation applications should be submitted using the Project Accreditation Service for SRS (PASS). For more information, please see our guidance on applying for an accredited research project.

To use the SRS, you must access it through the appropriate safe setting. For more information on the full range of safe setting options, please see our guidance on accessing data securely. 

Making our published spreadsheets accessible 

Following the Government Statistical Service (GSS) guidance on releasing statistics in spreadsheets, we will be amending our published tables over the next couple of publications to improve the usability, accessibility and machine readability of our published statistics. If you have any questions or comments, please email us at bics@ons.gov.uk

Reporting unit 

The reporting unit is the business unit to which questionnaires are sent. The response from the reporting unit can cover the enterprise as a whole, or parts of the enterprise identified by lists of local units.

Private sector businesses

The Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) is a survey of private sector businesses, meaning that the public sector is not sampled. Some businesses are also excluded; please see the Coverage section of this bulletin for more information.

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI, which was updated on 10 October 2024. 

The BICS is voluntary, and the results are official statistics in development. More information is available in our Guide to official statistics in development.

The results are based on responses from the voluntary fortnightly BICS, which captures businesses' views on financial performance, workforce, prices, trade and business resilience. The Wave 136 survey was live for the period 7 to 20 July 2025. For full details of the survey questions used, see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey questions: 7 to 20 July 2025 article. 

Coverage 

The BICS sampling frame is based on the same industries as our Monthly Business Survey (MBS). The MBS covers the UK for production industries only, and Great Britain for construction, retail and services industries. The MBS is an important input to the output measure of gross domestic product (GDP), which includes monthly GDP. 

For detailed information on the industries covered by the MBS and BICS, see our GDP(o) data sources catalogue. The following are some industries that are excluded from MBS and BICS: 

• agriculture 

• oil and gas extraction 

• energy generation and supply 

• public administration and defence 

• public provision of education and health 

• finance and insurance 

For more information on the methodology of producing the BICS, such as weighting, please see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI. 

Strengths and limitations 

More quality and methodology information (QMI) on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) QMI.