A (D) indicates a data suppression. Estimates are suppressed where necessary to avoid the disclosure of confidential information of business establishments that could be identifiable in metropolitan area estimates. These suppressions are an absolute condition of BEA’s use of the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages series produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), without which the GDP-by-metropolitan-area estimates would not be possible. BLS applies these suppressions to protect the private information of survey respondents; this protection enables BLS to collect higher-quality data than would otherwise be possible.
Published