A blog post from BEA Director Vipin Arora
My sons complain a lot about their chores—especially cutting the grass. I wonder if it would make them feel better to know that all their time sweating in the sun pushing a mower gets measured by BEA through our household production statistics. They might be even more excited to know the statistics are also capturing the other (unpaid) fun they have around the house like cleaning bathrooms, dusting, and vacuuming.
They’re in good company. Our statistics show that unpaid household activities continue to be an important source of production in the United States—about a sixth of total output. And while these activities fall outside the scope of gross domestic product, given GDP’s focus on market-based production, they’re critical to comprehensively understanding all production. That is why we’ve been producing household production statistics for nearly 30 years.
Our most recent update, released in June, was a big one. Importantly, it expanded the level of detail available. In the past we provided the total value added of household production (what it would contribute to GDP if included in that measure). With this update, value added became available for seven types of household activities, including childcare and shopping. We also added new measures: spending on household production and gross output of household production. Finally, this update integrated the household production statistics within our supply-and-use framework.
That’s what quality improvement looks like.
What’s the key takeaway of the new statistics? When integrated with market activities, household production accounted for about 30 percent of consumption and 16 percent of total output in 2024. Both shares have been gradually declining over the last 20 years.