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EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 08:30 A.M. EDT, FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2019

BEA 19-39

Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises, 2017

Worldwide employment by U.S. multinational enterprises (MNEs) increased 0.4 percent to 42.5 million workers in 2017 from 42.3 million in 2016, according to statistics released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on the operations and finances of U.S. parent companies and their foreign affiliates.

Employment in the United States by U.S. parents increased 0.2 percent to 28.1 million workers in 2017. U.S. parents accounted for 66.1 percent of worldwide employment by U.S. MNEs, down from 66.3 percent in 2016. Employment abroad by majority-owned foreign affiliates (MOFAs) of U.S. MNEs increased 0.9 percent to 14.4 million workers and accounted for 33.9 percent of employment by U.S. MNEs worldwide.

U.S. parents accounted for 22.0 percent of total private industry employment in the United States. Employment by U.S. parents was largest in manufacturing and retail trade. Employment abroad by MOFAs was largest in China, United Kingdom, Mexico, India, and Canada.

Worldwide current-dollar value added of U.S. MNEs increased 2.0 percent to $5.3 trillion. Value added by U.S. parents, a measure of their direct contribution to U.S. gross domestic product, was nearly unchanged at $3.9 trillion, representing 22.9 percent of total U.S. private-industry value added. MOFA value added increased to $1.4 trillion. Value added by MOFAs was largest in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland.

Worldwide expenditures for property, plant, and equipment of U.S. MNEs increased 2.0 percent to $853.2 billion. Expenditures by U.S. parents accounted for $653.6 billion and MOFA expenditures for $199.6 billion.

Worldwide research and development expenditures of U.S. MNEs increased 3.3 percent to $354.9 billion. U.S. parents accounted for expenditures of $298.3 billion and MOFAs for $56.6 billion.

Additional statistics on the activities of U.S. parent companies and their foreign affiliates including sales, balance sheet and income statement items, compensation of employees, trade in goods, and more are available on BEA’s website. More industry detail for U.S. parents and more industry and country detail for foreign affiliates are also available on the website and will be published in the September issue of the Survey of Current Business.

New Statistics Available for U.S.-Headquartered MNEs

A portion of U.S. MNEs (U.S. companies that own foreign affiliates) are ultimately foreign-owned. Because certain analyses require data that include only U.S.-headquartered MNEs (U.S. MNEs that are ultimately owned or controlled by a U.S. person), BEA has introduced a set of tables that feature U.S.-headquartered MNEs. The new tables include information on employment, value added, and sales. These data can be found in table 5 of the news release and in additional tables on BEA’s website.

Updates to the statistics

Statistics for 2016 are revised to incorporate newly available and revised source data. Preliminary statistics for 2016 were released in August 2018 and highlighted in “Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises in 2016” in the September 2018 issue of the Survey of Current Business.

Updates to Statistics on 2016 Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises Billions of dollars, except as noted
	U.S. Parents		MOFAs
	Preliminary estimate	Revised estimate	Preliminary estimate	Revised estimate
Number of employees (thousands)	28,022.9	28,022.6	14,256.1	14,265.4
Value added	3,925.7	3,916.2	1,300.4	1,302.1
Expenditures for property, plant, and equipment	657.5	641.5	199.5	195.1
Research and development expenditures	296.9	289.4	53.5	54.3

Next release: August 2020
Activities of U.S. Multinational Enterprises, 2018

Full Release & Tables (PDF)

Tables Only (Excel)

Release Highlights (PDF)

Technical

Ryan Noonan

(301) 278-9131

Ryan.Noonan@bea.gov

Media

Connie O'Connell

301-278-9003

Connie.OConnell@bea.gov

Resources

Stay informed about BEA developments by reading the BEA blog, signing up for BEA's email subscription service, or following BEA on Twitter @BEA_News.
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. MNEs will be provided in the September issue of the Survey of Current Business.
More statistics on the activities of U.S. MNEs, including more detail by industry and country, are available on the BEA website.
More information on the statistics on activities of U.S. MNEs is provided in U.S. International Economic Accounts: Concepts and Methods.
BEA also publishes a companion series on the activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs. Data for 2017 will be released November 15, 2019.

Definitions

A U.S. multinational enterprise (U.S. MNE) is composed of the U.S. parent and its foreign affiliates.

A U.S. parent is a person (in the broad legal sense to include any individual, partnership, corporation, or other form of organization), resident in the United States, that owns 10 percent or more of a foreign business enterprise, referred to as its foreign affiliate.

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

U.S.-headquartered MNEs are U.S. MNEs that are ultimately owned or controlled by a U.S. person.

Foreign-headquartered U.S. MNEs are U.S. MNEs that are ultimately owned or controlled by a foreign person.

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 the gross domestic product of the firm’s country of residence. The estimates of value added in this release were prepared by summing cost and profit data collected in BEA’s surveys of U.S. direct investment abroad 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) expenditures include expenditures for R&D performed by the U.S. parent or the affiliate, whether the R&D was for their own use or for use by others and irrespective of the source of funding.

Statistical conventions

The statistics on the activities of U.S. MNEs are based primarily on data reported in the Annual Survey of U.S. Direct Investment Abroad (BE-11) conducted by BEA. The statistics provide information on the operations and finances of U.S. parent companies and their foreign affiliates. The statistics on foreign affiliates cover the entire operations of the affiliate, irrespective of the percentage of U.S. ownership.

To compute the U.S. parent share of U.S. private industry employment, BEA used comparable statistics at the aggregate level for all U.S. private industries from BEA’s national income and product accounts (NIPAs) in line 3 (private industries) of Table 6.4D Full-Time and Part-Time Employees by Industry.

To compute the U.S. parent share of U.S. private industry value added, BEA used comparable statistics at the aggregate level for all U.S. private industries from BEA’s gross domestic product by industry accounts in line 2 (private industries) of the Value Added by Industry table.

Related Statistics

Statistics on the activities of U.S. MNEs are one part of a broader set of U.S. international economic accounts that, taken together, provide a comprehensive, integrated and detailed picture of U.S. international economic activities

Statistics on direct investment and multinational enterprises include annual statistics on the activities of U.S. affiliates of foreign MNEs, detailed annual and quarterly statistics on direct investment, and annual statistics on new foreign investment in the United States.

Statistics on international services, released annually, include detailed annual information on trade in services and on services supplied through the channel of direct investment by affiliates of MNEs.

The international investment position (IIP) accounts are released quarterly. The IIP is a statistical balance sheet that presents the dollar value of U.S. financial assets and liabilities with respect to foreign residents at a specific point in time.

The international transactions accounts (ITAs) are released quarterly. The ITAs are a statistical summary of economic activity between U.S. residents and the residents of other countries.

U.S. international trade in goods and services, released by BEA and the U.S. Census Bureau, provides monthly statistics on trade in goods and services.

List of News Release Tables

Table 1. Selected Data for U.S. Parents by Industry of U.S. Parent, 2017
Table 2. Selected Data for Majority-Owned Foreign Affiliates by Industry of Affiliate, 2017
Table 3. Selected Data for Majority-Owned Foreign Affiliates by Country, 2017
Table 4. Employment of Majority-Owned Foreign Affiliates, Country by Industry of Affiliate, 2017
Table 5. Selected Data of U.S. Multinational Enterprises, 2017