BEA Discontinued Tables: Rescue Ongoing

Last month, we were alerted to further notices of discontinued tables at the Bureau of Economic Analysis (part of the Department of Commerce), which added to a substantial amount of discontinued statistical products from this year.

It is important for us to note that in normal times, tables are discontinued for a variety of reasons (e.g., low usage, superseded by a new version, etc.). It has been a challenge for data rescuers to distinguish between normal data deprecation and that caused by the extremely abnormal political situation. Currently, the BEA is also holding archives of products it has discontinued on its website.

Given the uncertainty of the situation, we were pleased to learn that one of our volunteers, TripleShrimp, had already taken action and downloaded the archives of the discontinued tables. If you need a backup of the BEA’s data on Activities of U.S. Affiliates of Foreign Multinational Enterprises, you can find it on Data Lumos!