Developers, your requests have been heard. All regional data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis are now accessible through our application programming interface, or API. This includes industry detail for certain estimates, back-year estimates under the SIC industry structure and every statistic currently available in our interactive data tables.
The new API datasets are named “RegionalIncome” and “RegionalProduct”. The statistics available correspond to the public tables for the regional program. To assist in finding the economic statistics from these datasets, a new data availability page has been developed. The appendices I and J in the API User Guide are also descriptive and give helpful examples.
The new datasets are intended to replace the older regional dataset “RegionalData”, part of the API launched in May 2013, which only allows access to summary statistics. The older “RegionalData” dataset, however, will still be available. The new datasets join other in the API — BEA’s GDP and related national economic statistics, international transactions and investment, and foreign direct investment statistics. In addition to expanding the amount of data available on the API, BEA published an updated API User Guide, making it easier for developers to start using the service.
BEA’s API allows developers to build a service to search, display, analyze, retrieve, or view BEA statistics. For example, you can create a “mashup” that combines BEA data with other government or private data sources to create new services or give your users a different perspective on their communities. Or you can design a tool that gives your users new ways to visualize economic data.
The API includes methods for retrieving subsets of BEA statistical data and the meta-data that describes it using HTTP requests. It delivers data in two industry-standard formats: XML (Extensible Markup Language) and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).
To use the API, you need to register first. Full documentation is available in the updated API User Guide.
The BEA’s API is just one way BEA is supporting open data. Visit BEA’s Open Data site for a complete listing of BEA’s data sets in a machine readable JSON format, along with access to downloadable data sets and other data tools.