Business insights and impact on the UK economy: 5 March 2026

• In February 2026, 41% 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 up 6 percentage points compared with November 2025, and up 5 percentage points compared with February 2025.

• In February 2026, 55% of businesses with 10 or more employees reported that they expect staffing costs to increase over the next three months; this is up 20 percentage points compared with November 2025, but down 11 percentage points compared with February 2025.

• Less than one in five (18%) businesses with 10 or more employees reported that their employees' hourly wages increased in January 2026 compared with December 2025; this is broadly stable with January 2025 and January 2024.

• In February 2026, 17% of businesses with 10 or more employees reported they had been affected by worker shortages; this proportion has been broadly stable since November 2024.

• One in five (20%) businesses with 10 or more employees reported experiencing recruitment difficulties in January 2026, down 9 percentage points from October 2025; of these businesses, 47% cited a lack of qualified applicants for the roles on offer, while 29% cited a low number of applications.

• In February 2026, 20% of private sector businesses reported that they are using or planning to use increased homeworking as a permanent business model going forward; this has been broadly stable since January 2023.

The data presented in this bulletin are the final results from Wave 151 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), which was live from 16 February to 1 March 2026.

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 142 are available in our Business insights and impact on the UK subnational single-site economy: November 2025 article.

The percentage of businesses that reported they were trading in late February 2026 was 94%, with 83% fully trading, and 11% partially trading (for example, trading with reduced hours or staff numbers). Meanwhile, 4% of businesses reported "temporarily paused trading", and 2% reported "permanently ceased trading" as their business's trading status.

Survey data

Access to microdata

You can access the microdata for Waves 1 to 150 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 151 survey was live for the period 16 February to 1 March 2026. For full details of the survey questions used, see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey questions: 16 February to 1 March 2026 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.