Business insights and impact on the UK economy: 19 June 2025

• Around one in seven (14%) trading businesses reported that their turnover had increased in May 2025 compared with the previous calendar month, which is broadly stable with April but down 2 percentage points from May 2024; in contrast, 24% reported that their turnover had decreased, which is also broadly stable from April but up 2 percentage points from a year ago.

• Economic uncertainty continued to be the most reported challenge affecting turnover for trading businesses in early June 2025 at 27%, which is down 3 percentage points from early May 2025; for businesses with 10 or more employees, the most reported challenge was the cost of labour at 40%, which is broadly stable over the same period.

• A quarter (25%) of trading businesses reported an increase in the prices of goods or services bought in May 2025 compared with the previous month; this is down 7 percentage points from April and is the lowest proportion reported since December 2024 (24%).

• Over half (51%) of trading businesses reported that they are not considering raising their prices in July 2025, which is up 6 percentage points from June and is the highest proportion reported since December 2024 (52%); for those businesses that are considering raising prices, the most reported reason for doing so was labour costs (22%), which is down 5 percentage points from June.

• 16% of businesses with 10 or more employees reported that they were experiencing worker shortages in early June 2025; though this is broadly stable with early May, this is the lowest proportion reported since the question was introduced in late October 2021 (except for early February 2025).

• Around one in six (16%) businesses with 10 or more employees reported that they experienced recruitment difficulties in May 2025; this is down 2 percentage points from April and is the lowest proportion reported since the question was introduced in March 2022 (except for January 2025).

The data presented in this bulletin are the final results from Wave 134 of the Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS), which was live from 2 to 15 June 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 early May 2025 was 94%, with 85% fully trading, and 9% 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 133 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 134 survey was live for the period 2 to 15 June 2025. For full details of the survey questions used, see our Business Insights and Conditions Survey questions: 2 June to 15 June 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 report.