How to Read BEA's Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account — Value Added, Jobs and States

As of 7 November 2026, 00:26 KST (retrieved by this page at that time); latest edition on the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) page: Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account (ACPSA), U.S. and States, 2023, released April 2, 2025 (the page's Current Release line). The release covers 2023, with national statistics updated back to 1998 and state statistics back to 2001. A notice at the top of the BEA page, marked Posted: February 2026, says BEA will no longer regularly produce these statistics, so the 2023 account is the latest ACPSA release listed on BEA's arts-and-culture data page. Primary source: https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics/arts-and-culture^[1][2][3]

Comparison basis: percent changes are as published by BEA, rounded to one decimal; dollar values are BEA's table values in thousands (value added, compensation) or millions (gross output) of dollars. The 2022 levels of value added, employment and compensation are not printed in the cited pages, so only BEA's percent changes are shown for those rows. Real (inflation-adjusted) and nominal (current-dollar) changes are different measures and are kept apart.^[2][3]

In three lines

1. BEA's arts and cultural satellite account separates arts and cultural activity out of its existing national and state accounts.
2. In 2023 real arts and cultural value added rose 6.6%, against 2.9% for real GDP, and nominal value added was $1.17 trillion, 4.2% of GDP.
3. The account counted 5.4 million arts and cultural jobs in 2023; BEA now says it will no longer regularly produce these statistics.^[1][2]

A satellite account, not a survey. "This account was built by identifying, analyzing and separating out detailed data from existing BEA statistics." The estimates are carved out of BEA's national and regional accounts rather than collected from a separate sample of arts organizations. "BEA's Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account is supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts."^[1]

Real vs nominal. "The Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that arts and cultural economic activity, adjusted for inflation, increased 6.6 percent in 2023 after increasing 3.8 percent in 2022 (chart 1 and table 1)." "Nominal value added (not adjusted for inflation) increased 7.6 percent nationally in 2023 (table 2)." The 6.6% is a volume measure after removing price change; the 7.6% includes price change.^[2][3]

Share of the economy. "Arts and cultural economic activity accounted for 4.2 percent of GDP, or $1.17 trillion, in 2023 (tables 2 and 3)." "By comparison, the broader economy, as measured by real gross domestic product (GDP), increased 2.9 percent in 2023 after increasing 2.5 percent in 2022 (chart 1)." The GDP figures are the BEA estimates printed in this April 2, 2025 release; BEA's later revisions of GDP are not reflected in it.^[2]

Wage-and-salary jobs, not people. "The total number of arts and cultural jobs for the nation was 5.4 million." "Arts and cultural employment nationwide increased 0.3 percent in 2023." "Arts and cultural compensation nationwide increased 3.6 percent in 2023." BEA's ACPSA definitions page states: "ACPSA employment consists of all wage‐and‐salary jobs where the workers are engaged in the production of ACPSA goods and services." So the 5.4 million (Table 8 gives 5,395,370) are wage-and-salary jobs, not a count of people; in this page's reading, work outside wage-and-salary jobs is outside this measure, and one person holding two such jobs counts twice.^[2][3][4]

Geography. State tables cover all 50 states and the District of Columbia. "For all states and the District of Columbia, the arts and cultural share of total GDP ranged from 9.8 percent in Washington state to 1.2 percent in Delaware."^[2][3]

Total vs core plus supporting. In Table 2 the U.S. total is 1,169,753,742 thousand dollars, while core (265,805,188) and supporting (873,767,497) industries add to 1,139,572,685; the remaining 30,181,057 thousand (about $30.2 billion, 2.6% of the total) is this page's subtraction. BEA's footnote to Table 3 explains the gap (Table 2's footnote prints the same sentence with that is instead of that are): "Total arts and cultural production industries includes core industries, supporting industries, and industries with secondary production that are designated as artistic and cultural." Total is therefore not the sum of the two named groups.^[3]

Value added vs gross output. Table 7 gives gross output of arts and cultural industries of 1,990,239 million dollars in 2023, larger than the $1.17 trillion of value added, because gross output also counts the intermediate goods and services that industries buy. The two should not be compared as if they measured the same thing.^[3]

Growth vs level. Nevada had the largest 2023 increase in nominal arts and cultural value added (14.7%), while Washington state had the largest share of state GDP (9.8%). A fast-growing state and a state where arts and culture are a large share of the economy are different rankings.^[2][3]

Suppressed and odd cells. In the state employment and compensation tables some cells show (D): "Data are suppressed to avoid disclosure of confidential information." Missing values here are withheld for confidentiality, not zero. A few percent-change cells in Table 8 are printed as whole numbers without a decimal (for example Ohio's core employment and compensation changes, 4 and 8), as printed by BEA.^[3]

Planned release that did not appear. The April 2, 2025 news release ends with the line Next release: March 2026 and names the next edition as the account for 2024. At retrieval, BEA's page still listed the April 2, 2025 release as current, and the notice above it said BEA will no longer regularly produce these statistics.^[1][2][3]

Superseded banner. The archived news release page carries the banner "These data have been superseded." The BEA data page cited here does not list any newer release of this account, and the cited pages do not say which later figures the banner refers to.^[1][2]