Business insights and impact on the UK economy: 4 September 2025

• In late August 2025, 48% of businesses with 10 or more employees reported that their staffing costs (including wages, bonuses, national insurance (NI), and pension contributions) had increased over the last three months; this is down 29 percentage points compared with late May, but up 12 percentage points compared with late August 2024. 

• 17% of businesses with 10 or more employees reported that their employees' hourly wages increased in July 2025 compared with June, which is a 38 percentage point fall compared with April, but is broadly in line with July 2024; the seasonal pattern of peaks in April followed by falls has been observed every year since the question was introduced in 2022. 

• In late August 2025, 31% of businesses with 10 or more employees expected staffing costs to increase over the next three months; this is a 10 percentage point decrease compared with late May 2025 and a 3 percentage point increase compared with this time last year. 

• 31% of businesses with 10 or more employees reported experiencing difficulties recruiting employees in July 2025, which is broadly stable with April; around half (51%) of those businesses reported a lack of qualified applicants for the roles on offer, while nearly a third (32%) cited a low number of applications for the roles on offer. 

• 19% of private sector businesses reported in late August 2025 that they are using or planning to use increased homeworking as a permanent business model going forward; this has been broadly stable since late November 2024. 

• In late August 2025, 33% of businesses with 10 or more employees that had exported goods in the last 12 months reported they were affected by US tariffs in the last month; 31% expected an impact in the next month, while the most reported expected impact was having to pass on additional costs to customers (13%).

The data presented in this bulletin are the final results from Wave 139 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), which was live from 18 to 31 August 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. 

The percentage of businesses that reported they were trading in late August 2025 was 94%, 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 3% reported "permanently ceased trading" as their business's trading status.

Access to microdata

You can access the microdata for Waves 1 to 138 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 the 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.

Trading businesses 

Trading businesses refers to businesses that responded that their trading status was “currently fully trading” or “currently partially trading” only. 

If trading businesses is not specifically specified, the statistics presented refer to businesses that have “Not permanently stopped trading”. This includes trading businesses and those that said their trading status was “paused trading and intends to restart in the next two weeks” or “paused trading and does not intend to restart within the next two weeks”. 

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 139 survey was live for the period 18 to 31 August 2025. For full details of the survey questions used, see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey questions: 18 to 31 August 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 report. 

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.