How to Search the Bureau of Economic Analysis web site
The Bureau of Economic Analysis, or BEA, is a government website that provides access to thousands of statistical tables. To go to the website, type in your browser.
The website is broken down in a variety of ways. The website provides multiple access points to get to the data. Thus, you can often access the same data by using different searches.
Current U.S. economic information is listed under news. Additional tables are listed under Publications and Resources.
Note the interactive data tables link and symbol. When you see this symbol in the BEA website, it means that you will be able to manipulate the data by date, region, industry, or other criteria.
The center of the page is arranged by area (National, International, Regional),
by Industry, and by Integrated Accounts.
On the right side of the screen there is a search box, latest statistics, and newly released publications of interest.
We will first look for personal income for the Binghamton area. To do this, go to the Regional section in the center of the page, and click on State and Local Area Personal Income.
On the next page, note the News and Data sections. Click on the Local Area Personal Income and Employment link. On the following page, click on Personal Income and Population.Then pick Metropolitan Statistical Area.
On the next screen, you can pick your metropolitan area or areas (select Binghamton), your dates, and your specific statistics.Click Next Step.
Note the bar on the right of the results screen, which gives you options for charting, downloading and printing.
Now, let’s go back to the BEA homepage.
Let’s try the search again, using the Search box on the upper right of the page. We will type Personal Income Binghamton in the box.
From the Clustered results on the next screen, click binghamton.
There are multiple results listed in the middle of the page. Let’s click the first one. Note that the tables listed may or may not exactly match the table that you pulled up via the first search. This is because the data may be available from multiple documents, not all of which present it in the same way.
For additional help, go to the Libraries homepage and click the Ask Us link, listed under the Help button.
CH 2007 rev. 5-2010, rev. 2/1/2012