Director’s Message
In this issue of the Survey of Current Business, we present the latest estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) for the U.S. territories of American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, along with an appendix that includes an updated summary of methodologies and tables of the key data sources used to estimate GDP in these territories. The estimates are produced in collaboration with the U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Insular Affairs and with staff from the territorial governments. We also provide a Spotlight on new prototype estimates of Puerto Rico GDP, a major step by the Bureau to produce comprehensive economic accounts for Puerto Rico consistent with international guidelines and comparable to national and state GDP as well as GDP for the other U.S. territories.
Our “GDP and the Economy” article this month discusses the second estimate of GDP for the first quarter of 2021, and a separate article details government receipts and expenditures, also for the first quarter of 2021.
Also in this issue, we include a subject guide to articles that have appeared in the Survey in the first half of this year.
Centennial content this month includes articles on influencers Dale W. Jorgenson, whose “Jorgenson system of national accounting” has had profound impacts on national accounting, analysis, and policy at the Bureau and other statistical agencies and worldwide, and Selma Fine Goldsmith, whose groundbreaking research on income distribution 70 years ago paved the way for the Bureau’s work in this area today. Stay tuned next month as we wrap up our commemoration of the centennial of the Survey and celebrate the journal’s 100th birthday with a set of downloadable posters highlighting the history of the U.S. economy as recorded in the pages of the Survey over the past 10 decades.
