Yes, BEA may make adjustments to the source data to ensure accuracy and consistency with respect to concepts, definitions, and scope. BEA makes four broad types of adjustments to source data that are incorporated into the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) statistics.
The first consists of adjustments that are needed so that the data conform to appropriate NIPA concepts and definitions. For example, Internal Revenue Service data from corporate tax returns include estimates of depreciation, but these estimates are based on historical-cost valuation and on tax service lives. BEA must adjust these estimates to the NIPA definition of depreciation—consumption of fixed capital—which is based on current-cost valuation and economic service lives.
The second type of adjustment involves filling gaps in coverage. For example, one of the primary sources for the quarterly estimates of the change in private inventories component of GDP is the Census Bureau’s Monthly Wholesale Trade Survey. However, this source does not cover inventories of nonmerchant wholesalers (wholesalers that do not take title to the goods they sell). Thus, the survey data must be augmented by separate BEA estimates for the change in the inventories of these wholesalers.
The third type of adjustment involves time of recording and valuation. For example, in the NIPAs (as in BEA’s International Transactions Accounts), imported goods are valued at “foreign port value”—that is, the value at the point of exportation to the United States. The source data on imports of goods from Canada, which the Census Bureau receives in a bilateral data exchange with Canada, are often valued at the point of manufacture; thus, BEA must adjust these data to foreign port value by adding the cost of transporting these goods within Canada from the point of manufacture to the point of export to the United States.
The fourth type of adjustment involves accounting for inaccurate or inconsistent source data that affect the accuracy and reliability of BEA’s estimates. For example, most components of BEA’s personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index are based on consumer price indexes (CPIs) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In recent years the CPI for legal services has been increasingly volatile and is no longer published by BLS. However, BLS continues to provide BEA with the unpublished CPI. In January 2026 the unpublished CPI showed an unprecedented increase that could not be substantiated by any other data. As a result, BEA made a downward adjustment to the PCE price index using changes in the BLS producer price index (PPI) for legal services to inform the adjustment.
An example of a BEA adjustment to address inconsistencies in source data occurred in the first quarter of 2025 where an unprecedented increase in imported goods was not consistently valued in published Census inventory levels. To ensure accurate measures of GDP and related measures, BEA adjusted its change in private inventory statistics to align their valuation with the valuation of imports. Specifically, BEA adjusted inventories to bring them to market value, consistent with imports.