A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora
I’ve always thought that a good analogy for the way we develop our economic estimates at BEA is how a master watchmaker constructs a watch. The watchmaker starts with a blueprint for the design of the watch, just as we begin with the methods of our world-leading economic accounts. Based on that design, the watchmaker carefully selects and assembles the components of the watch. Similarly, BEA’s economists meticulously select high-quality source data and compile them within a rigorous economic accounting framework to develop our estimates. In both cases, the individual components are transformed into something collectively meaningful.
In BEA’s case, there are a lot of individual components. In fact, we use over 600 different private and public sector data sources from more than 200 different organizations to produce our widely used statistics, such as gross domestic product, inflation, and consumer spending.
The largest proportion of our input comes from the federal government—over 300 unique sources from nearly 80 different organizations. Some of the most important come from other federal statistical agencies, such as the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
Data from state governments are critical to both our national and regional statistics. We use about 190 different sources from state and local governments, such as data on pensions and nutrition programs. These data come from all 50 states, cities, and other local entities across the country.
The other major suppliers of source data for BEA are the private sector and international organizations. Every year we make use of roughly 100 private sector data sources across our estimates, and we bring in additional information from international entities.
High-quality source data are the foundation for the accurate, reliable, and relevant economic statistics that BEA customers depend on.