In official economic statistics, “real” means inflation-adjusted. “Nominal” or “current-dollar” values are measured in the prices of the period.
GDP aggregates production for the economy; it does not by itself show how income or economic gains are distributed among households. BEA has separately developed distributional and “GDP and Beyond” work because GDP and GDP per capita were n
The Current Employment Statistics payroll survey excludes several categories that the household survey can count as employed, including unincorporated self-employed workers, most agricultural workers, unpaid family workers, and private-hous
No. BEA defines disposable personal income as personal income minus personal current taxes. Rent, mortgage payments, groceries, insurance, utilities, debt payments, and other household bills have not yet been subtracted.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis maintains Household Production Economic Statistics as a supplemental account specifically to estimate economic value outside the market economy that standard GDP does not include. In 2026 BEA expanded those i
The headline Consumer Price Index includes food and energy. BLS also publishes a separate “all items less food and energy” index, commonly called core CPI, because those categories can be volatile.
BEA’s personal saving rate is aggregate personal saving divided by aggregate disposable personal income. It is not the median household’s savings rate.
