Data & Methodology

All economic data on this site comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account (ORSA). Congress mandated the creation of this account through the Outdoor Recreation Jobs and Economic Impact Act of 2016 (P.L. 114-249), and the BEA has published annual data since 2012.

The satellite account extends the BEA's standard national income and product accounts to isolate the economic activity attributable to outdoor recreation. It uses the same underlying data as GDP (tax records, business surveys, census data) but filters and reattributes it to outdoor recreation categories.

National-level data provides the most granular view, with roughly 50 individual activity categories. This is more detailed than the state-level data, which groups some activities together.

The BEA's definition is broader than most people expect. It includes:

• Conventional outdoor activities: Hiking, camping, fishing, hunting, skiing, cycling, boating, climbing, kayaking, RVing, horseback riding, snowmobiling, and similar activities.
• Other outdoor recreation: Amusement and theme parks, outdoor festivals and concerts, field sports (golf, soccer, etc.), guided tours, game areas, and wildlife viewing.
• Supporting services: Travel and tourism, lodging, food and beverage, gear and apparel shopping, and transportation that supports outdoor recreation.
• Government expenditures: Federal, state, and local spending on outdoor recreation infrastructure: trails, parks, ranger programs, recreation facilities.

This means Disney World, Six Flags, and professional outdoor sporting events are part of the "outdoor recreation economy" as measured by BEA. So is RV manufacturing, fishing tackle retail, ski lodge construction, gardening, and golf. Indoor activities are excluded even if recreational. Indoor rock climbing, indoor pools, and gyms don't count. The line is literally "in the open air."

Gross output is the total dollar value of everything the outdoor recreation sector produces. In 2024, that was roughly $1.26 trillion.

Value added is gross output minus the cost of inputs purchased from other industries. It represents the sector's direct contribution to GDP. In 2024, value added was $696.7 billion, about 55% of gross output.

Value added is the better measure for comparing outdoor recreation to other sectors. When someone says outdoor recreation is "2.2% of GDP," they're using the value added figure.

Nominal values are reported in current dollars. Real values are adjusted for inflation using 2017 as the base year.

From 2017 to 2024, nominal value added grew 54%. Adjusted for inflation, real growth was roughly 20%. The majority of reported growth is price increases, not more economic activity. Lift tickets cost more, hotel rooms cost more, gear costs more. The industry is raising prices faster than it's growing participation.

Employment counts full-time and part-time jobs supported by outdoor recreation, including self-employed workers. It counts jobs, not people. Someone with two part-time outdoor recreation jobs appears twice.

Compensation includes wages, salaries, and employer-provided benefits. It does not include proprietor's income or investment returns.

BEA organizes outdoor recreation into roughly 50 activity categories in a hierarchical structure. The three top-level categories are:

• Core outdoor recreation: Split into "conventional" activities like hiking, fishing, and skiing, and "other" outdoor recreation like amusement parks, festivals, and field sports. At the national level, you can drill into individual activities (e.g., "skiing" as a subset of "snow activities" as a subset of "conventional outdoor recreation").
• Supporting services: Travel, lodging, food, shopping, transportation. This category now accounts for over half of total value added and continues to grow. The outdoor recreation economy is, at its core, a travel and hospitality economy.
• Government: Federal, state, and local recreation spending on infrastructure, parks, and programs.

State-level data provides less granularity than national data. Some individually reported national activities are grouped into broader state-level categories.

• Definition breadth. The total is inflated by including amusement parks, RV manufacturing, and outdoor concerts. When headline figures cite outdoor recreation as a "$700B industry," theme parks and factories are a substantial part of that.
• Attribution assumptions. Allocating economic activity to "outdoor recreation" involves modeling, not direct measurement. The BEA uses industry codes and statistical techniques to attribute revenue across sectors.
• Lag time. BEA data is typically released with a lag. The 2024 data was published in March 2026.
• No participation data. This measures economic output, not participation. The economy can grow through price increases alone.
• COVID distortion. 2020 and 2021 data reflects dramatic compositional shifts. Gear purchases surged while travel and lodging collapsed. These effects haven't fully normalized.
• Supporting services dominate. Over half the "outdoor recreation economy" is actually travel, lodging, food, and shopping. The outdoor recreation economy is, at its core, a tourism and hospitality economy.

BEA data is presented as reported. Rankings, growth rates, and composition percentages are computed from the published figures. Real (inflation-adjusted) figures use the BEA's own series with 2017 as the base year.

The insight callouts are manually written observations based on additional research and analysis, not BEA findings. They're meant to add context that the charts alone can't provide: what a slowdown actually means, why supporting services dominate, or what the gap between nominal and real growth tells you about pricing versus participation. Sources are linked where available.

• BEA Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account: the primary data source for all economic figures on this site
• BEA ORSA Methodology Paper (2018): original methodology documentation
• Outdoor Recreation Jobs and Economic Impact Act of 2016: the law that mandated the satellite account