BEA has discontinued publishing statistics for county aggregate geographies, including metropolitan statistical areas, for two reasons:
- Fewer suppressions on BEA’s published county statistics. Each set of county aggregate geography statistics requires additional data privacy protection, increasing the number of suppressions on published county statistics. By not publishing county aggregate geography statistics, there are fewer suppressions on BEA’s county statistics.
- Maintain the quality of BEA’s published statistics. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) updates its aggregate geography definitions every year based only on current county geographic definitions. Changes in OMB aggregate geography definitions do not account for previous county definitions for the entire time periods of BEA’s county estimates (1969-forward for personal income and 2001-forward for GDP). This, along with limited information for BEA to produce statistics for aggregated county geographies, including metropolitan statistical areas, across the entire time series of available county statistics, risks accuracy. The aggregated statistics do not meet BEA’s publication standards. The introduction of OMB’s new county definitions, based on planning regions, in Connecticut in BEA’s county statistics for 2024 highlight the issue. The latest OMB aggregate geography definitions account for the new county definitions in Connecticut but there is no information on how the new counties relate economically to the old county definitions or how the county aggregate geographies might be impacted by the county redefinition to produce reliable estimates back to 1969 or 2001.