Director’s Message

In this issue of the Survey of Current Business, our Regional Quarterly Report takes a look at state gross domestic product (GDP), state personal income, and personal consumption expenditures by state statistics, all for 2020. These statistics reflect the results of the annual update of the Regional Economic Accounts and the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs).

Elsewhere, we discuss newly released and expanded estimates of Bureau of Economic Analysis small business statistics including wages, employment, and gross output by industry and enterprise size for 2012–2017. These statistics provide an additional layer of detail to better understand the composition of the nation’s small businesses. We are also researching other ways to estimate small business statistics including using different size classes, datasets, and business characteristics. We invite our data users to send feedback or suggestions for future research to SmallBusiness@bea.gov.

We also present our annual guide to the methodologies and source data for the NIPAs, a valuable resource for all users of the statistics. And our monthly “GDP and the Economy” article discusses the advance estimates for the third quarter of 2021.