Director’s Message
We are pleased to present our annual summary of the methodologies and source data used to prepare the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs), a valuable resource for all users of these statistics. Specifically, this summary looks at the methodologies and source data used to estimate current-dollar gross domestic product (GDP), current-dollar gross domestic income, and real GDP. Various improvements to the NIPAs were also introduced as part of the 2018 comprehensive update, which was released in July 2018 and discussed in an article in September.
Separately, the “GDP and the Economy” article details the advance estimates of the third quarter of 2018. Real GDP increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 4.2 percent.
