National

How does BEA adjust wages and salaries to account for the effects of COVID-19?

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), which was signed into law on March 27, 2020, provided $268 billion for expanded unemployment insurance benefits provided through three programs:

How did BEA adjust March 2020 wages and salaries to account for the effects of COVID-19?

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, most schools closed in March 2020, with many beginning the transition to online learning.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act of 2020 provided $300 billion in direct support through economic impact payments to individuals, including advance tax rebate payments distributed mostly in April 2020. A $1,200 refundable tax credit was provided to individuals ($2,400 for joint taxpayers) that meet specified criteria. In addition, qualified taxpayers with children received $500 for each child.

Federal government shutdowns impact economic activity; consumer spending may be delayed or canceled, business investment decisions may be deferred, and government services provided to the public may be halted or scaled back. For the most part, the effects of the federal government shutdown on components of GDP and the national income and product accounts (NIPAs), such as personal consumption expenditures or private wages and salaries, cannot be quantified, because they are embedded in the regular source data that underlie the estimates and cannot be separately identified.

Dividends are a form of income that shareholders of corporations receive for each share of stock that they hold. These payments -- from a corporation's profits or from its accumulated retained earnings -- are in cash or other assets (excluding the corporation's own stock). The definition of dividends in the System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA) -- the international guidelines for national accounting -- is consistent with this definition.

GDP measures the market value of the goods and services a nation produces. Unpaid work that people do for themselves and their families isn't traded in the marketplace, so there are no transactions to track. Surveys asking people how they spend their time can be used to estimate household production. But the United States only began collecting these data annually in 2003, and many countries have never done a nationally representative survey.

Yes. In July 2018, BEA started producing not seasonally adjusted statistics (NSA) that are released at the same time as its quarterly GDP estimates each month. Not seasonally adjusted statistics can be used in conjunction with seasonally adjusted statistics and offer a new tool to evaluate the economy.

This FAQ is rendered obsolete because of changes introduced as part of the 2013 comprehensive revision of the NIPA accounts.