Transportation accounts for a larger share of the nation's economy than traditional measures indicate, according to the newly developed Transportation Satellite Accounts (TSA's) released for the first time by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

According to the TSA's, the value added to economic output by transportation activities totaled 5.0 percent of GDP; the traditional input-output accounting measure of value added by transportation industries is 3.1 percent.

The TSA's, like other satellite accounts, provide a more comprehensive measure of an economic activity --in this case, transportation--by bringing together components of that activity wherever they occur throughout the economy and including activities that are internal to the firm and for which there are no observable prices. For example, the TSA's include the transportation activities that are conducted by a grocery company's truck fleet when it moves goods from warehouses to the retail outlets of the grocery store chain. Input-output accounting, on the other hand, defines transportation output as the sum of the output of the industries that provide transportation commodities in the market for hire. The more inclusive scope of the TSA's will facilitate research into the important role played by transportation throughout the economy.

According to the TSA's, the trade and services industries were the non-transportation industries that provided the largest amount of the total transportation output that industries provide to themselves. On a TSA basis, the wholesale and retail trade accounted for 25.9 percent of such output, and services accounted for 25.4 percent. Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 2.4 percent of the use of total for-hire transportation output, and services accounted for 5.6 percent.

The TSA's were developed jointly by BEA and the Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Additional information about the TSA's appear in the April 1998 issue of the Survey of Current Business. Information on how to order the Survey of Current Business is provided below.

BEA's major national, regional, and international estimates, selected articles from the Survey of Current Business (BEA's monthly journal), and BEA news releases are available on BEA's web site: http://www.bea.gov

STAT-USA maintains an electronic bulletin board (EBB) and an Internet site, which contains BEA estimates, BEA news releases, and the Survey of Current Business. The information available through STAT-USA is often more detailed and more timely than that available from other sources. To subscribe to STAT-USA's World Wide Web system, go to http://www.stat-usa.gov. Subscriptions for single-user unlimited access to STAT-USA's Internet information are $50.00 for 3 months or $150.00 for 1 year. For further information, call (202) 482-1986.

The printed Survey of Current Business is available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C. 20402. First class mail: Annual subscription $69.00 domestic. Second class mail: Annual subscription $35.00 domestic, $43.75 foreign; single issue $11.00 domestic, $13.75 foreign.

Table 1.--Total Use of Transportation Across Industries and Final Uses /1/
[percent]

* Less than 0.1 percent.

1. "Final uses" consist of personal consumption expenditures; gross private fixed investment; change in business inventories; exports and imports of goods and services; and Federal, State and local government consumption expenditures and gross investment.
2. "Own-account transportation" consists of transportation activities that are internal to the firm and for which there are no observable prices.
3. "Other" consists of government enterprises (except State and local government passenger transit); noncomparable imports; scrap, used and secondhand goods; general government industry, rest of the world adjustment to final uses; household industry; and inventory valuation adjustment.
4. Detail may not add to 100 because of rounding.