The Bureau of Economic Analysis continually explores the development of new statistics and improvements to existing ones as part of our mission to provide Americans a timely, accurate, and in-depth understanding of the changing U.S. economy. These are some of the ways we're innovating and delivering statistics that are relevant to data users in the United States and beyond.
Personal Income and Outlays
BEA plans to release monthly personal income and outlays statistics, which detail how much people are earning, spending, and saving nationally, at the same time as estimates of GDP, starting in 2026.
Gross Domestic Product
BEA is working on consolidating the third-estimate release of GDP each quarter, which now includes GDP by industry, to also include quarterly state GDP and personal income and annual state consumer spending. Beginning in the spring of 2026, accelerating the state statistics will provide a comprehensive picture of national and state economies all at once.
International Investment
BEA plans to accelerate statistics on the United States' net international investment position, including them with international transactions in a single news release in 2026.
Global Value Chains
BEA is developing new statistics that measure the value added of imported content from other countries used in the production of goods and services exported by the United States, aiding analysis of increasingly complicated supply chains. These statistics measuring what's known as trade in value added, or TiVA, complement traditional trade statistics by showing the mix of domestic and imported content used to produce U.S. exports. BEA's new tool, the TiVA table builder, makes it easier to access the data and create custom tables. TiVA statistics cover 138 U.S. industries and these global areas: Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, Rest of Asia and Pacific, Europe, and Rest of World.
International Services Trade
More country and area detail is now available about U.S. exports and imports of services, including financial services, travel, information services, and intellectual property rights. A new table introduced in July 2025 provides data on exports, imports, and the services trade balance for 237 countries and areas, 147 more than included in previously existing tables. In BEA's Services Trade by Enterprise Characteristics tables, trade in services statistics by type of service and employment size were accelerated. This expansion is part of BEA's broader effort to provide more information on services trade.
Direct Investment by State
The BEARFACTS data tool now has information about new foreign direct investment for every state and the District of Columbia. Information on the activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign multinational enterprises is also included.
States and Counties
In September 2025, BEA plans to release state gross domestic product (GDP), personal income, and consumer spending statistics all at the same time, a first. In December 2025, county GDP and personal income will be released simultaneously for the first time, providing customers with a fuller picture of state and local economies. In addition, in May 2025 BEA released a working paper with experimental estimates of quarterly personal consumption expenditures by state. In late 2025 or early 2026, BEA plans to release another working paper with experimental estimates of annual government expenditures and investment by state. BEA also is working to produce statistics on the type and value of services that each state exports abroad and imports from abroad.
Distribution of Personal Income
These statistics take one of BEA's primary economic indicators – U.S. personal income – and measure how it is distributed across households. This provides a way to assess how households share in the nation's economic growth. The first national prototype statistics were published in 2020 and are now part of our regularly produced official statistics. The first experimental state statistics were released in 2023. In the summer of 2025, BEA debuted an experimental national nowcast providing information on the shares and growth of personal income by quintile.
More Data; Strong Safeguards
BEA is exploring a statistical technique that safeguards underlying confidential business information while permitting more economic data to be revealed to the public. The Bureau is researching the use of noise infusion as a replacement for its traditional cell suppression for statistics that are based on BEA survey data on foreign direct investment and international trade in services. Injecting statistical "noise" into the data would make more statistics publicly available, increasing their usability, while continuing to protect the confidentiality of company-specific data. More detailed information by country or industry, for example, could be made available in existing data offerings, new tables could be created, or both.
Ultimate Destination of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad
BEA is experimenting with different approaches to measure the ultimate geographic destinations, or host countries, for investment flowing from parent companies of U.S. multinational enterprises through their ownership chains abroad. Currently, BEA's direct investment abroad statistics identify the first country to which the investment flows. By identifying countries where such investments ultimately land, the United States' financial connections to other countries can be better seen. These experimental ultimate host economy statistics, combined with other BEA direct investment data, can provide customers with a fuller picture of multinational enterprises' investments, hiring, supply chains, and global competitiveness.
Crypto Assets
BEA is researching how crypto assets, such as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and centralized exchanges like Coinbase, are treated in GDP and other BEA macroeconomic statistics. Classification guidance was recently released by the United Nations' System of National Accounts 2025 and the International Monetary Fund's Integrated Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (7th edition).
Artificial Intelligence
BEA is actively exploring ways to leverage AI —not just for survey design, data collection, and dissemination, but more broadly in other areas as well. For example, in our regional statistical program, AI is being used to build a statistical platform to perform nowcasting for timelier statistics, imputation for more granularity, and anomaly detection for better accuracy.