BEA’s Regional Economic Accounts: Past Improvements and What Lies Ahead for the Regional Program Robert L. Brown Calibrating the Nevada Economy: Data and Tools for Assessing Our State and Local Economies Reno, Nevada February 2, 2007

2 BEA’s Regional Accounts Initiatives  Accelerated estimates  New statistics  Other improvements  Future improvements

3 Accelerations Acceleration Data releaseFromToTiming Quarterly state personal income4 months3 monthsCompleted 2004 Total GDP by state 18 months6 monthsCompleted 2005 GDP-by-state industry detail 18 months10 monthsCompleted 2005 County industry detail 16 months12 monthsCompleted 2005 Metro-area personal income16 months9 monthsCompleted 2006

4 New Statistics: Local Area Compensation  County estimates of compensation by industry, 1998 forward  Sum of Wages and salaries and supplements to wages  Labor costs of production  First released in 2005  December release provides early indicator of economic activity for counties

5 New Statistics: More Local Area Data  Metro area disposable personal income  Researching the estimation of personal current taxes for metro areas  Subtracted from personal income to derive DPI  Some results from the prototype estimates…  Bridgeport, CT per capita personal current taxes 16,150—26.1% of personal income  McAllen, TX per capita personal current taxes 1,082—7.4 % of personal income

6 New Statistics: More Data on Tables  New tables—CA04 summary and CA06 Compensation  More Geography  New Metropolitan area definitions—including micropolitan areas  More detail on tables  Since 1996 the amount of detail on tables has doubled  1996—0.9 million lines per year  2006—2.0 million lines per year

7 New Statistics: Longer Time Series  Annual state earnings industry data now back to 1990 on a NAICS basis  Previously only 2001 forward  GDP by state now available for 1963 forward on SIC basis  Previously 1977 forward

8 New Statistics: Interarea Prices  Indexes that permit place to place comparisons correcting for price level differences  Jointly with the BLS, using CPI microdata  Intermediate goal: produce indexes for 38 urban areas  Covers 87 percent of US population  CPI covers urban areas, so state indexes require additional data  BEA Advisory Committee presentation and Working Paper in 2005  Article in September 2006 Monthly Labor Review

9 Other Improvements: Improved Preliminary State Wage Methodology

10 Other Improvements: Outreach  Outreach to users of the statistics  6 Regional data users conferences around the country in the past 15 months  7 RIMS training workshops for regional data users in the past 15 months

11 Regional Working Papers and Presentations in One Location  Go To: BEA Home  Regional  Articles Tool Bar  Regional Working Papers and Presentations

12 Future Improvements: More Accelerations of Releases  Personal income for metropolitan areas  8 months after end of calendar year  GDP by state and sector  6 months after end of calendar year

13 Future Improvements: More Local Area Data  Gross metro product (GMP)  Initial estimates—top-down approach:  Allocate state GDP by local area earnings data  Research into bottom-up approach for non-labor part of GMP  Taxes and gross operating surplus  Research using sub-state Census Bureau data

14 Future Improvements: Alternative Estimates of Regional Income  Develop alternative household income measures that better meet user needs to:  Measure spending capacity  Track tax base  Research to be released this Spring

15 US Pension Accounting, 2000 Personal income 8, Net reclassifications Pension contributions Pension Fund Property Income Pension benefits Adjusted personal income 8,013.6

16 Future Improvements: Personal Income Mapping  Interactive Web-based state and county personal income mapping  Prototype this year

17 Future Improvements: GDP by State  Carry GDP by state back to 1992 on a NAICS industry basis  NAICS currently from 1997  Requires back-casting Census Bureau data at Center for Economic Studies  Develop alternative state GDP methodology to estimate gross output and intermediate expenses

18 Future Improvement: Regional Multipliers  Produce value-added multipliers  In addition to gross output multipliers currently produced  Improve methods to “regionalize” the national input-output accounts  Research into capturing interregional flows of goods and people

19 Other Future Research: New Data Sources  The American Community Survey (ACS) and the Local Employment Dynamics (LED) datasets as substitutes for the decennial Census long-form  IRS information returns data by state  Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data for contributions to health insurance

20 And Finally: Comprehensive Revision  Spring 2009—every 5 years  Definitional revisions  Statistical and methodological revisions  Presentational revisions

21 Questions?  Contact:  Robert L, Brown  