Integrated BEA-BLS Industry-Level Production Account, 1997–2023

The Sources of U.S. Economic Growth in the Aftermath of the COVID–19 Recession

By Corby Garner, Justin Harper, Matt Russell, and Jon Samuels¹  |  April 25, 2025

Download PDF

In April 2025, the Integrated Industry-Level Production Account (ILPA) for the United States was updated to include new statistics for 2022 and 2023 and revised statistics for 1997–2021. In this article, the dataset is used for an analysis of the sources of economic growth in the aftermath of the COVID–19 recession.

The ILPA represents an ongoing collaboration between the National Economic Accounts of the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Productivity Program. The account combines industry-level output and intermediate inputs from BEA's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by Industry Accounts with capital input and labor data from the BLS Productivity Program to create an internally consistent production account. It contains detailed data on output and inputs in current and constant prices as well as total factor productivity (TFP) growth by industry.² The foundations of this account are discussed in detail by Fleck et al. (2014), with expanded discussion of sources and methods in Garner et al. (2018, 2020).

With this update to the statistics, the underlying data for gross output, intermediate inputs, and value added are now consistent with the results of the 2024 annual update of the Industry Economic Accounts, released on September 26, 2024.³ Data on capital and labor inputs have been updated to reflect the TFP estimates released by BLS in December 2024.⁴ The first year of data in the ILPA is now 1997 (in the previous release, it was 1987). This more limited time series reflects fewer years of historical data available in BEA's GDP by Industry Accounts after the release of the comprehensive update in September 2023.

An important feature of the ILPA is that it recognizes and measures different types of outputs produced and inputs used by each industry and assigns prices to each of these components of production. This approach, which originated with Jorgenson and Griliches (1967) at the aggregate level and was expanded to the industry level by Jorgenson, Gollop, and Fraumeni (1987), is important because it separately accounts for changes in the composition of inputs and changes in TFP. The early studies using these methods were focused on analyzing the long-term sources of economic growth by attributing output growth to the contributions of changes in inputs (capital and labor), quality, and TFP, but more recent studies have used these accounts for studying medium-term (and sometimes short-term) fluctuations in the economy. For example, Jorgenson, Ho, and Stiroh (2005) identify subsample periods to analyze medium-term trends, including the information technology (IT) boom in the mid-1990s, and Garner et al. (2022) examine the Great Recession and the COVID–19 recession. In this article, the updated ILPA is employed to compare two periods of economic turmoil and recovery: the COVID–19 pandemic and the Great Recession. The accounting reveals important differences in the periods. The COVID–19 recession and recovery had faster TFP growth and an acceleration in the contribution of intangible capital assets.

The remainder of this article is divided into two main sections. The first section presents results for the entire period covered by the account, 1997–2023, including descriptive statistics on the industry origins of the sources of economic growth. The second part presents results that focus on comparing how the economy evolved in the years around the last two recessions.

Table 1 presents estimates of the aggregate sources of U.S. economic growth between 1997 and 2023.⁵ Productive capital accumulation accounted for the largest share of U.S. aggregate value-added growth over this period, followed by TFP growth and then the contribution of labor input. The finding that input growth (capital and labor) accounted more than 70 percent of output growth is consistent in attributing the sources of growth with the work of Jorgenson and Griliches (1967). That seminal work, along with many subsequent papers, argued that the contribution of TFP to economic growth in the United States is diminished once proper measurement techniques are used. This led Jorgenson (1996) to conclude that the preponderance of economic growth in the United States has been driven by investment in assets and human capital, not by changes in TFP.

The COVID–19 recession was the largest annual downturn in real GDP since the 2009 annual decline in GDP that marked the Great Recession. In this section, the ILPA is used to compare both periods of decline and recovery in order to shed light on the differences and to demonstrate the usefulness of the account. Table 1 presents the sources of real aggregate value-added growth for selected subperiods.⁹ The 2007–2019 period includes the Great Recession and recovery, while the 2019–2023 period includes the COVID–19 recession and recovery. The tabulation shows that both periods exhibited slower growth than the 1997–2007 period leading up to the Great Recession, and a comparison of the 2019–2023 period to the 2007–2019 period suggests the Great Recession had a longer-lasting impact on growth than the COVID–19 recession. Growth during the 2019–2023 period was faster than the 2007–2019 period, on average. The majority of this was driven by faster TFP growth in the later period, although the contribution of capital was larger during the later period as well. The larger capital contribution was driven primarily by the contribution of intangible capital. In the remainder of this section, the industry origins of these macro results are presented.

Table 3 shows that the faster growth in the 2019–2023 period compared to the 2007–2019 period can almost be completely accounted for by TFP increases in the finance, insurance, real estate, and leasing sector and the other services sector.¹⁰ Chart 1 decomposes these 9 sector contributions to 63 industries.¹¹ Even though, at the aggregate level, TFP growth contributed more to aggregate value-added growth in 2019–2023 than in 2007–2019, the chart shows that there was a large dispersion across the 63 industries. It shows a positive bar if the TFP contribution was higher in 2019–2023 than in 2007–2019. That is, a negative value does not mean TFP growth for that industry was negative; it indicates that TFP growth was slower in the later period than in the earlier period. The largest accelerations in the contributions of TFP growth were in real estate; miscellaneous professional, scientific, and technical services; chemical products; data processing, internet publishing, and other information services; and rental and leasing services and lessors of intangible assets. It is worth noting that TFP growth in the real estate sector is challenging to measure because it involves prices for the provision of owner-occupied housing. Chart 1 shows that over half of the industries contributed to the aggregate acceleration in TFP growth. On the other end of the distribution, because TFP growth in construction, wholesale trade, retail trade, and insurance carriers and related activities, among others, slowed relative to 2007–2019, these industries contributed less to aggregate TFP growth during 2019–2023 than during 2007–2019.

[Click chart to expand]

The acceleration in the contribution of capital input accounted for about half as much as the acceleration of TFP growth to the difference in real aggregate value-added growth between the periods. Chart 2 shows that this was driven by increasing capital contributions in many sectors, including real estate; data processing, internet publishing, and other information services; federal government; miscellaneous professional, scientific, and technical services; and retail trade, among others. On the other hand, rental and leasing services and lessors of intangible assets; broadcasting and telecommunications; and petroleum and coal led the industries in which the capital contribution decelerated. Referring back to the larger capital contribution of intangible capital (table 1) in the later period, detailed results published on the BEA website trace these contributions to accelerating intangible capital services contributions in miscellaneous professional, scientific, and technical services; federal government; data processing, internet publishing, and other information services; insurances carriers and related activities; and retail trade as the largest contributors. There were industries in which the contributions of intangible capital decelerated, including the legal services and “other transportation equipment” industries.

[Click chart to expand]

Finally, while the aggregate contribution of labor services was similar in the 2007–2019 and 2019–2023 periods, chart 3 shows that, across industries, there were important changes. During the later period, labor input in miscellaneous professional, scientific, and technical services; publishing industries, except internet (includes software); construction; and warehousing and storage, for example, contributed more to real aggregate value-added growth than during the 2007–2019 period. Industries in which the contribution was larger during the 2007–2019 period compared to the 2019–2023 period included food services and drinking places, hospitals and nursing and residential care, state and local government, management of companies, and educational services. When workers are classified by level of educational attainment, industries in which the contribution of workers with a college degree was larger in 2019–2023 than in 2007–2009 include the publishing industries, except internet (includes software); miscellaneous professional, scientific, and technical services; construction; and securities, commodity contracts, and investments. The contribution of workers with a college degree was lower in 2019–2023 than in 2007–2019 in state and local government; federal government; management of companies and enterprise; and educational services. It is worth noting that this deceleration need not reflect a decline in the number of workers with a college degree in these sectors, but it does reflect less growth in the later period than in the earlier period. When sorted by workers without a college degree, the data show declining contributions, i.e., larger contributions in 2007–2019 compared to 2019–2023, in food services and drinking places; hospitals and nursing and residential care; other services; and accommodation and increasing contributions of workers without a college degree in warehousing and storage; miscellaneous professional, scientific, and technical services; “other transportation and support activities”; and construction.

[Click chart to expand]

The Integrated Industry-Level Production Account released in April 2025 indicates ongoing structural change in the economy, both across industries and in how industries innovate and use factors of production. Data through the end of 2023 showed that TFP growth was stronger in the last few years than it has been since the IT-related boom that began in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. The nine-sector level data presented in the production account show that transformations mainly occurred within the finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing sector and the other services sector, but examination of the detailed industry data demonstrates that it is important to conduct analysis at a finer level of detail because not all industries within major sectors increased (or decreased) at the same rate. The account also demonstrates the important role of capital investment in U.S. economic growth. Over the 1997–2023 period, capital input accounted for almost half of U.S. real aggregate value-added growth. At the industry level, the largest difference between the contribution of capital input in the 2007–2019 and 2019–2023 periods was the contribution of capital services in the real estate industry. Industry-level data, within an integrated production account framework, are important for analyzing the drivers of economic growth and the sources of structural change in the economy. The full set of industry tables that can serve as a starting point for such analysis are available on BEA's website.

Fleck, Susan, Steven Rosenthal, Matthew Russell, Erich H. Strassner, and Lisa Usher. 2014. “A Prototype BEA/BLS Industry-Level Production Account for the United States.” In Measuring Economic Sustainability and Progress, edited by Dale W. Jorgenson, J. Steven Landefeld, and Paul Schreyer, 323–372. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Garner, Corby, Justin Harper, Tom Howells, Matt Russell, and Jon Samuels. 2018. “Integrated Industry-Level Production Account for the United States: Experimental Statistics for 1987–1997, Revised Statistics for 1998–2015, and Initial Statistics for 2016.” Survey of Current Business 98 (July).

Garner, Corby, Justin Harper, Matt Russell, and Jon Samuels. 2020. “Integrated Industry-Level Production Account for the United States and the Sources of U.S. Economic Growth Between 1987 and 2018.” Survey of Current Business 100 (April).

Garner, Corby, Justin Harper, Matt Russell, and Jon Samuels. 2022. “Integrated BEA/BLS Industry-Level Production Account: Statistics for 1987–2020 and a Retrospective Look at How the COVID–19 Recession Compared to the Great Recession.” Survey of Current Business 102 (June).

Jorgenson, Dale W. 1996. “Technology in Growth Theory.” Paper presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston at the Technology and Growth Conference Series No. 40, Boston, MA, June.

Jorgenson, Dale W., Frank Gollop, and Barbara Fraumeni. 1987. Productivity and U.S. Economic Growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Jorgenson, Dale W., Mun S. Ho, and Kevin J. Stiroh. 2005. Productivity Volume 3: Information Technology and the American Growth Resurgence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jorgenson, Dale W., Mun S. Ho, Jon D. Samuels, and Kevin J. Stiroh. 2007. “Industry Origins of the American Productivity Resurgence.” Economic Systems Research 19, no. 3 (October): 229–252.

Jorgenson, Dale W. and Zvi Griliches. 1967. “The Explanation of Productivity Change.” The Review of Economic Studies 34, no. 3 (July).