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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 (API).
• BEA's news release schedule.
• More information on these statistics on the activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs will be provided in the December issue of the Survey of Current Business.
• More statistics on the activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs, including more detail by industry and country, are available on the BEA website.
• More information on the statistics on activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs is provided in U.S. International Economic Accounts: Concepts and Methods.
• BEA also publishes a companion series on the activities of U.S. MNEs. Data for 2016 were released August 24, 2018.

Definitions

A U.S. affiliate is a U.S. business enterprise in which there is foreign direct investment—that is, in which a foreign parent owns 10 percent of more of the U.S. business enterprise.

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

A foreign parent is the first person (in the broad legal sense to include any individual, partnership, corporation, or other form of organization), resident outside the United States, that has a direct investment interest in the affiliate.

The ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) is that person, proceeding up a U.S. affiliate’s ownership chain, beginning with and including the foreign parent, that is not owned more than 50 percent by another person. Unlike the foreign parent, the UBO of an affiliate may be located in the United States.

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 gross domestic product. The estimates of value added in this release were prepared by summing cost and profit data collected in BEA’s surveys of foreign direct investment in the United States and are conceptually consistent with BEA’s estimates of U.S. value added by industry.

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

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

Statistical conventions

The statistics on the activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs are based primarily on data reported in the Annual Survey of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States (BE-15) conducted by BEA. The statistics provide information on the operations and finances of U.S affiliates and cover the entire operations of the affiliate, irrespective of the percentage of foreign ownership.

MOUSA shares of domestic activity are provided in this news release for employment, value added, research and development performed, and expenditures for property, plant, and equipment. These shares are computed by dividing MOUSA activity levels by measures of domestic activity from other data sets that are approximately comparable to the MOUSA measures. MOUSA measures include activities in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories, while these activities are excluded in the corresponding domestic measures. For the employment share presented in this news release, MOUSA data on employment in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories are excluded to improve comparability. The domestic totals used to compute shares are detailed below:

• Employment statistics for all U.S. private industries come from line 3 (private industries) of NIPA Table 6.4D Full-Time and Part-Time Employees by Industry. Statistics for state-level shares come from BEA’s regional economic accounts in “Private nonfarm wage and salary employment (number of jobs)”, minus “Private Households”, from the Full- Time and Part-Time Wage and Salary Employment by Industry (SA27, SA27N) table.
• Statistics on value added for all U.S. businesses come from line 2 (business) of NIPA Table 1.3.5 Gross Value Added by Sector table.
• Statistics on business R&D performed in the United States come from the National Science Foundation.
• Statistics on U.S. private business capital expenditures come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Capital Expenditures Survey. These statistics exclude expenditures by farms and expenditures on land, both of which are included in the MOUSA statistics on expenditures for property, plant, and equipment.