A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora
My son and I recently visited the twin cities of Menominee in Michigan and Marinette in Wisconsin for the first time. We strolled along the pier in Menominee before driving along the bay in Marinette. What a treat! I later found out that these two cities share a rich economic history – stretching back to the 19th century – as they developed together into a manufacturing hub. That made me think about BEA’s economic accounts. They, too, have developed together and evolved over the years, providing the very foundation for today’s most essential economic statistics.
Our economic accounts—the International Economic Accounts, the National Economic Accounts (including industry statistics), and the Regional Economic Accounts—are pieces of a world-leading system that has been developed, tested, and refined for over 100 years. Taken together, they provide comprehensive, integrated, and consistent measures of U.S. economic activity.
This system of interconnected economic accounts is at the heart of the usability, relevance, and reliability of our economic statistics. These three accounts provide the methodological foundation for measuring the U.S. economy. They allow people to make consistent comparisons between the economic performance of the United States in relationship to other countries, for instance, or how one state or county is faring compared to others in a region. That kind of consistent measurement is what ultimately matters to our data users.
The statistics flowing from BEA’s economic accounts help policymakers and businesspeople in the United States and beyond monitor and analyze the economic performance of our country, identify trends and patterns, and make informed decisions.