A Prototype BEA/BLS Industry-Level Production Account for the United States

GDP by industry statistics provide detailed information on the industry sources of aggregate value added growth, but do not include estimates of the contributions of capital and labor inputs and multifactor productivity (MFP) to economic growth. MFP measures the output per unit of capital, labor, and intermediate inputs, and is an important component of growth in GDP. The official MFP measures provide information on components of economic growth in the market economy, but they do not report detailed information on the nonmarket economy. Differences in concepts and methods used by each respective agency persist due to the nature of each program, but each statistical program depends on the other to prepare its measures. This paper builds on the GDP by industry statistics produced by the BEA and the capital, labor and MFP statistics produced by the BLS to assemble an industry-level production account for the US that is consistent with GDP. The key feature of this internally-consistent prototype account is to provide values, prices, and quantities of outputs and inputs used in the industry production process. This set of accounts allows one to decompose industry contributions of inputs and MFP to the sources of GDP growth at the aggregate level.