Director’s Message
In this issue, we are pleased to present a preview of the 2020 annual updates to the U.S. international transactions accounts and the U.S. international investment position accounts, to be released in June. The updates will incorporate newly available and revised source data as well as new methodologies for several accounts, primarily in trade in services, and notable presentational changes. These improvements are the result of multiyear efforts by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to research and develop enhanced statistics, with the goal of providing more timely, relevant, and accurate statistics to our users.
Separate international articles cover U.S. international transactions and the U.S. international investment position for the fourth quarter of 2019 and for the full year 2019.
Elsewhere, we discuss the recently updated integrated industry-level production account, an ongoing collaboration between BEA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This BEA Briefing covers the basic components of the account and presents selected evidence on the sources of U.S. economic growth for 1987–2018.
This month’s “GDP and the Economy” article takes a look at the third estimate of gross domestic product for the fourth quarter of 2019. Government receipts and expenditures for the same quarter are discussed separately.
