Gross domestic product

GDP organizes production through a geographic and time boundary. The familiar expenditure identity is C + I + G + (X - M): household consumption, gross private domestic investment, government consumption and investment, and net exports. Imports are subtracted because they can appear inside the other spending components but were not produced domestically.

“Final” prevents ordinary double counting of intermediate inputs. Because the measure is “gross,” depreciation has not been deducted. “Domestic” follows the location of production rather than the owner's nationality. Those boundaries close different interpretation errors; none is decorative wording.

GDP is not one company's revenue, the government's budget, national wealth, or a complete welfare measure. It omits or imperfectly represents distribution, unpaid work, leisure, environmental depletion, household production, quality change, and many external effects. A rise can accompany losses borne unevenly.

Published GDP is an estimate with a vintage. State current or real dollars, level or rate, annual or quarterly period, annualization convention, seasonal adjustment, and release date. Later estimates may revise the same period.