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EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EST, Friday, November 18, 2022

BEA 22–57

Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises, 2020

Worldwide employment by U.S. multinational enterprises (MNEs) decreased 1.8 percent to 42.4 million workers in 2020 (preliminary) from 43.2 million workers in 2019 (revised), according to statistics released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on the operations and finances of U.S. parent companies and their foreign affiliates.

Employment in the United States by U.S. parents decreased 2.2 percent to 28.4 million workers in 2020. U.S. parents accounted for 67.0 percent of worldwide employment by U.S. MNEs, down from 67.3 percent in 2019. Employment abroad by majority-owned foreign affiliates (MOFAs) of U.S. MNEs decreased 1.0 percent to 14.0 million workers and accounted for 33.0 percent of employment by U.S. MNEs worldwide.

Employment by U.S. Multinational Enterprises, 2020

U.S. parents accounted for 23.1 percent of total private industry employment in the United States in 2020, up from 22.1 percent in 2019 as total private industry employment fell more than U.S. parent employment. Employment by U.S. parents was largest in manufacturing and retail trade. Employment abroad by MOFAs was largest in the United Kingdom, India, Mexico, China, and Canada.

Worldwide current-dollar value added of U.S. MNEs decreased 9.0 percent to $5.1 trillion. Value added by U.S. parents, a measure of their direct contribution to U.S. gross domestic product, decreased 9.9 percent to $3.8 trillion. U.S parents accounted for 20.8 percent of total U.S. private-industry value added, down from 22.6 percent in 2019. MOFA value added decreased 6.4 percent to $1.3 trillion. Value added by MOFAs was largest in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland.

Worldwide expenditures for property, plant, and equipment of U.S. MNEs decreased 9.7 percent to $833.1 billion. Expenditures by U.S. parents accounted for $651.9 billion, and MOFA expenditures accounted for $181.2 billion.

Worldwide research and development expenditures of U.S. MNEs increased 3.2 percent to $420.2 billion. U.S. parents accounted for expenditures of $361.2 billion, and MOFAs accounted for $59.1 billion.

Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises, 2020

Additional statistics on the activities of U.S. parent companies and their foreign affiliates including sales, balance sheet and income statement items, compensation of employees, trade in goods, and more are available on BEA’s website. More industry detail for U.S. parents and more industry and country detail for foreign affiliates are also available on the website.

Coronavirus (COVID–19) Impact on the 2020 Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises

Most of the key indicators included in the U.S MNE statistics decreased in 2020 resulting in part from the impact of COVID–19. The full economic effects of the COVID–19 pandemic cannot be quantified in the statistics because the impacts are generally embedded in source data (BEA direct investment surveys) and cannot be separately identified. The response rates for the surveys were consistent with those in periods before the pandemic. No special adjustments to BEA’s imputation and estimation procedures were necessary.

Updates to the statistics

Statistics for 2019 were revised to incorporate newly available and revised source data. Preliminary statistics for 2019 were released in November 2021 and highlighted in “Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises in 2019” in the December 2021 Survey.

**Table A. Updates to Statistics on 2019 Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises** [Billions of dollars, except as noted]
	U.S. Parents		MOFAs
	Preliminary estimate	Revised estimate	Preliminary estimate	Revised estimate
Number of employees (thousands)	29,297.3	29,075.7	14,610.6	14,153.8
Value added	4,234.5	4,231.6	1,437.0	1,416.2
Expenditures for property, plant, and equipment	738.9	731.2	205.0	191.7
Research and development expenditures	350.2	349.0	58.2	58.3

Next release: November 17, 2023
Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises, 2021

Full Release & Tables (PDF)

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Technical

Mark Goddard

301-278-9162

mark.goddard@bea.gov

Media

Connie O'Connell

301-278-9003

Connie.OConnell@bea.gov

Resources

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Historical time series for these estimates can be accessed in BEA's Interactive Data Application.
Access BEA data by registering for BEA's Data Application Programming Interface.
BEA's news release schedule
More information on the statistics on the activities of U.S. MNEs will be provided in the December issue of the Survey of Current Business.
More statistics on the activities of U.S. MNEs, including more detail by industry and country, are available on the BEA website.
More information on the statistics on activities of U.S. MNEs is provided in U.S. International Economic Accounts: Concepts and Methods.
BEA also publishes a companion series on the activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs. Data for 2020 were released August 19, 2022.
Detailed microdata from the surveys are available to researchers in BEA’s Special Sworn Researcher program under arrangements that maintain legal confidentiality requirements.

Definitions

A U.S. multinational enterprise (U.S. MNE) is composed of the U.S. parent and its foreign affiliates.

A U.S. parent is a person (in the broad legal sense to include any individual, partnership, corporation, or other form of organization), resident in the United States, that owns 10 percent or more of a foreign business enterprise, referred to as its foreign affiliate.

A majority-owned foreign affiliate (MOFA) is a foreign business enterprise in which the combined ownership of all U.S. parents, either directly or indirectly, exceeds 50 percent.

Employment covers the total number of full-time and part-time employees on the payroll at the end of the year.

Value added is the value of the final goods and services produced by a firm’s labor and property. Value added represents the firm’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) of the firm’s country of residence. The estimates of value added in this release were prepared by summing cost and profit data collected in BEA’s surveys of U.S. direct investment abroad and are conceptually consistent with BEAs estimates of U.S. value added by industry.

Expenditures for property, plant, and equipment covers total expenditures for land and depreciable structures and equipment; it is gross of any sales, retirements, or transfers of previously owned tangible assets.

Research and development (R&D) expenditures includes expenditures for R&D performed by the U.S. parent or the affiliate, whether the R&D was for their own use or for use by others and irrespective of the source of funding.

Statistical conventions

The statistics on the activities of U.S. MNEs are based primarily on data reported in the Annual Survey of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad (BE-11) conducted by BEA. The statistics provide information on the operations and finances of U.S. parent companies and their foreign affiliates. The statistics on foreign affiliates cover the entire operations of the affiliate, irrespective of the percentage of U.S. ownership.

To compute the U.S. parent share of U.S. private industry employment, BEA used comparable statistics at the aggregate level for all U.S. private industries from BEAs National Income and Product Accounts in line 3 (“Private industries”) of “Table 6.4D. Full-Time and Part-Time Employees by Industry.”

To compute the U.S. parent share of U.S. private industry value added, BEA used comparable statistics at the aggregate level for all U.S. private industries from BEA’s GDP by Industry Accounts in line 2 (“Private industries”) of the table “Value Added by Industry.”

Related Statistics

Statistics on the activities of U.S. MNEs are one part of a broader set of U.S. International Economic Accounts that, taken together, provide a comprehensive, integrated, and detailed picture of U.S. international economic activities. Statistics on direct investment and multinational enterprises include annual statistics on the activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs, detailed annual and quarterly statistics on direct investment, and annual statistics on new foreign investment in the United States.

Statistics on international services, released annually, include detailed annual information on trade in services and on services supplied through the channel of direct investment by affiliates of MNEs.

The International Investment Position (IIP) Accounts are released quarterly. The IIP is a statistical balance sheet that presents the dollar value of U.S. financial assets and liabilities with respect to foreign residents at a specific point in time.

The International Transactions Accounts (ITAs) are released quarterly. The ITAs are a statistical summary of economic activity between U.S. residents and the residents of other countries.

U.S. international trade in goods and services, released by BEA and the U.S. Census Bureau, provides monthly statistics on trade in goods and services.

List of News Release Tables

Table 1. Selected Data for U.S. Parents by Industry of U.S. Parent, 2020
Table 2. Selected Data for Majority-Owned Foreign Affiliates by Industry of Affiliate, 2020
Table 3. Selected Data for Majority-Owned Foreign Affiliates by Country, 2020
Table 4. Employment of Majority-Owned Foreign Affiliates, Country by Industry of Affiliate, 2020