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About the FRED Blog

These brief articles use data and graphing features in FRED®, our free data service. They illustrate timely economic concepts and best practices for using data. Views expressed are not necesarily those of the St. Louis Fed or Federal Reserve System.

The takeaway

The U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Integrated Economic Survey (AIES) is one of the building blocks of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) industry accounts.

The data

In a previous FRED Blog post we discussed how the Census uses the AIES to benchmark several of its own surveys. Today we look at how this work connects to the work of the BEA.

Our FRED graph above compares the dollar value of annual AIES manufacturing shipments (solid blue line) with BEA's quarterly gross output for manufacturing (dashed green line).

Between the first quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2026—the data available at the time of this writing—the two lines moved together with similar values. Changing the frequency of the BEA data from quarterly to annual further shrinks those differences.

The lines don't match exactly because each data series measures slightly different things. AIES shipments count the value of products that manufacturers ship. BEA's gross output is mainly an industry's sales or revenue from production; and, for manufacturing, it also adds the change in inventories of finished goods and work in process.

How BEA uses the AIES

Each September, the BEA revises GDP, GDP by industry, and state-level statistics in an annual update that incorporates more complete and detailed source data to track overall economic activity. The AIES is a major tool used in that effort. Visit the BEA for more details.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Manufacturing: Shipments.” Click “Edit Graph” and the “Add Line” tab to search for “Gross Output by Industry: Manufacturing.” Don’t forget to click “Add data series.” Next, use the “Format” tab to customize Line 2 by selecting “Y-Axis position: Right.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

About the FRED Blog

These brief articles use data and graphing features in FRED®, our free data service. They illustrate timely economic concepts and best practices for using data. Views expressed are not necesarily those of the St. Louis Fed or Federal Reserve System.