How to Read BEA's Marine Economy Satellite Account — Value Added, Output and Employment

As of 7 November 2026, 01:12 KST (retrieved by this page at that time); latest Marine Economy Satellite Account release listed on BEA's marine economy data page: Marine Economy Satellite Account, 2023, from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), released June 5, 2025, with statistics for 2014–2023. A notice at the top of that page, marked Posted: February 2026, says BEA will no longer regularly produce these statistics. Primary source: https://www.bea.gov/data/special-topics/marine-economy^[1][2][3]

Comparison basis: table values are in millions of dollars as printed by BEA; text values are BEA's rounded figures. The percent changes for value added and gross output in current dollars are this page's calculations; the real changes, employment and compensation changes are as stated by BEA. The 2022 and 2023 levels of employment and compensation are not printed in the cited pages.^[2][3]

In three lines

1. BEA's marine economy account gathers ocean, coastal and Great Lakes activity that is spread across industries in the national accounts.
2. In 2023 the marine economy's value added was $511.0 billion, 1.8% of U.S. GDP, and its real value added grew 2.9%, the same as the overall economy.
3. Employment rose 4.5%, or 111,000 employees; BEA will no longer regularly produce these statistics.^[1][2]

A rearrangement of existing accounts. "In practice, the MESA is a rearrangement of the published SUTs with new estimation methods that isolate marine-related spending and production." "The Marine Economy Satellite Account was produced in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."^[2]

Geography. The scope covers the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans within the Exclusive Economic Zone (about 200 nautical miles off the coast), marginal seas such as the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound, and the shoreline along them. "Furthermore, the Great Lakes are included up to the international boundary with Canada." There are no state figures in the cited release.^[2]

Employment unit. "Marine economy compensation increased 9.4 percent, or $19.1 billion, and employment increased 4.5 percent, or 111,000 full- and part-time employees." BEA's methodology paper defines the measure: "Compensation is defined as total wages and supplements by industry, and employment is defined as the average annual number of full-time and part-time employees." The release text also describes government employment as about 793,000 full- and part-time jobs, so its wording moves between employees and jobs; in this page's reading both refer to the same average annual count of full-time and part-time employees, not to people counted once.^[2][4]

Real vs nominal. "Real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) for the marine economy increased 2.9 percent from 2022 to 2023 (table 1), compared with a 2.9 percent increase for the overall U.S. economy." Current-dollar value added rose about 5.9% (this page's calculation from Table 2). The roughly 3.0-percentage-point gap between nominal and real growth is consistent with a substantial price component (this page's calculation). BEA's table note warns: "Because the formula for the chain-type quantity indexes uses weights of more than one period, the corresponding chained-dollar estimates are usually not additive."^[2][3]

Value added vs gross output. "The marine economy accounted for $826.6 billion, or 1.7 percent, of current-dollar gross output in 2023 (table 8)." Gross output is larger than value added ($511.0 billion) because it also counts the goods and services that marine industries buy from other industries; the two measures should not be compared as if they were the same.^[2][3]

Activity vs industry. The release presents the same total by activity (10 groups, such as tourism and recreation) and by industry (such as government, which was 32.6% of marine value added in 2023). The two views rearrange the same total and should not be added together.^[2][3]

Footnote wording. The offshore-wind footnote reads Consists solely of offshore wind-generated energy under Tables 1 to 4 and 8, but Consists soley of offshore wind-generated energy under Table 7, as printed by BEA.^[3]

Methodology paper title. The release refers readers to a paper titled Defining and Measuring the U.S. Ocean Economy, while the linked paper's own title page reads Defining and Measuring the U.S. Marine Economy and is dated June 2020; the paper describes the 2018 prototype statistics, not the 2023 release.^[2][4]

Planned release that did not appear. The June 5, 2025 release ends with the line Next release: Spring 2026, naming the account for 2024. At retrieval, BEA's data page still listed the June 5, 2025 release as current, under the notice that BEA will no longer regularly produce these statistics. A future release date is not established by these sources.^[1][2][3]

Superseded banner. The archived news release page carries the banner "These data have been superseded." The data page cited here lists no newer release, and the cited pages do not say which later figures the banner refers to.^[2]