Gross domestic product only accounts for consumer spending, investments, government spending, and net exports—meaning factors such as stock market performance, Social Security payments, household labor, and the value of environmental damage largely aren't represented.

There are three different ways to calculate gross domestic product: the expenditure approach, the value-added approach, and the income approach.

Learn how 'real' and 'nominal' gross domestic product differ, with real GDP being adjusted for inflation and nominal GDP reflecting current monetary values.

In the wake of the Great Depression, a Russian-American economist named Simon Kuznets popularized the formula for gross domestic product to summarize the health of the economy and provide the American government with a metric to track growth.

Explore a breakdown of the US gross domestic product, including GDP's growth over time, the GDP of individual states, and which industries contribute the most to US GDP.

Consumer spending accounts for 70% of America's gross domestic product.

A list of the world's top 25 economies by GDP

Gross domestic product estimates the value of goods and services produced in a country, typically through the expenditure method, which adds up spending by consumers, investors and governments with the value of exports. The top five economies are the US, China, Germany, Japan and India.

See a breakdown of every state's portion of the entire US gross domestic product.

There's no single definition of an economic recession, though recessions are commonly identified by two consecutive quarters of shrinking gross domestic product.

Some economists argue that the national debt is not a critical concern.

Nearly 70% of the US government’s debt is domestic

This includes intragovernmental holdings like the Social Security Trust Fund and investments from US citizens, banks, and mutual funds. About 30% is foreign-held, with countries like Japan and China as major creditors, investing in US Treasury securities due to their perceived safety.

A recession is commonly defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking GDP, but in practice, these economic phenomena are more complex.

At $159K, Luxembourg has the world's highest GDP per capita (also known as GDP per person) as of June 2026.

The national debt consists of public debt and intragovernmental debt.

One signal that a recession has become a depression? When GDP declines more than 10%

There’s no single definition for recessions or depressions, but both are marked by sustained periods of declining economic activity. Depressions are more severe than recessions.

Individual income taxes are the federal government's primary revenue source, see a tracker that breaks down where the rest of the budget comes from

The US government historically makes nearly half of its total revenue last year from individual income taxes. But the US makes also makes money from a variety of other sources, including Medicare taxes and corporate income taxes. However, the federal government has run a deficit since 2001—reaching a peak of $3.13T in 2020.

What something costs is reflective of a balance in the market determined by the amount of demand relative to the supply of goods and services

Because economies are complex systems, a wide variety of issues influence this balance—including some things generally considered to be positive, like rising wages.

In 2025, the US credit rating was downgraded over concerns about the debt-to-GDP ratio.

Treasury bonds, notes, and bills are critical vehicles for the federal government to raise money for public expenses and manage the national debt.

Tax policy can have a direct impact on the national debt, with past presidents' changes to tax codes inflating the deficit.

See comparisons of different countries' taxation strategies

Taxes are a major revenue source for most countries, and how each government taxes citizens often reflects the country's economy. Developed countries tax at much higher rates than developing ones, and as a country grows its GDP, it also typically grows the proportional percentage of taxes it gains from its citizens.

US state economies compared to entire countries

This map compares US state economies by their gross domestic product to that of a similarly sized country. For instance, California has the largest state economy in the US, with a GDP nearly equal to that of India, the fifth-largest economy in the world. Click here to see how the rest of the states compare.

Consumer spending accounts for 70% of US GDP, making Black Friday significant

Lizabeth Cohen, a history professor at Harvard and author of the book “A Consumer's Republic: The Politics Of Mass Consumption In Postwar America,” has argued that the US government has presented consumerism as a way out of economic crisis or decline since around World War II.

Ranking the world’s economies: 1980 vs. 2025

The US remains the world’s largest economy, having increased its annual gross domestic product from $2.9T in 1980 to $30.6T in 2025. In 1980, China ranked seventh globally with a GDP of $304B. In 2025, China ranked second with a GDP of $19.4T.

Policymakers make complex trade-offs when considering tariffs—while they can generate government revenue and encourage the consumption of locally produced goods, they can also lead to higher consumer prices and may negatively impact economic growth.

See a breakdown of how each country contributes to the world's $126T economy.

See a chart that shows how the average American spends their annual earnings, with almost half of all American consumer spending going toward transportation and housing.

Roughly $5T of stimulus money flooded the economy during the pandemic

Recessions can last anywhere from months to years. To encourage economic growth, governments use policy levers such as lowering interest rates or introducing a stimulus. Economists credit massive stimulus funds for helping the economy quickly recover from a recession during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The roughly 11 countries in BRICS, an economic coalition created to counter the G7, collectively hold about 40% of global gross domestic product when adjusted for purchasing power parity.

Revenue from tariffs goes to the US Treasury's general fund.

If the US government paid off its debt, it could disrupt the entire bond market, as Treasury bonds are among the most common bonds for investors and the majority of the national debt is in bonds.

It's tough to measure just how much the global commodities market is worth

That's partly because of all the different ways and places commodities are traded—such as futures exchanges, spot markets, and over-the-counter deals. Additionally, the same commodity can be traded multiple times in different markets, making it easy to risk duplicating trade values in calculations.

Auto and consumer goods companies absorbed billions in costs due to President Trump's 2025 tariffs.

The federal deficit is the gap between what the US spends and what it collects.

'And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans:' Hear Robert Kennedy's famous 1968 speech criticizing gross domestic product as the primary benchmark for American growth.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, Amsterdam became the first city to apply 'doughnut economics,' a new economic school of thought that defines productivity in terms of environmental impact.

Private companies are often harder to value than public companies

That's partly because there isn't readily available stock information, and financial accounting is kept behind closed doors. Typically, determining the value of a private company involves, among other things, closely comparing the private company with its competitors.

Investors collectively own $28T in US Treasury securities

The 10-year Treasury yield is a central measure of the health of the economy, shaping how much both the government pays on its debt and the cost of borrowing for the private sector. This explainer provides stats and explainers on the important metric.

When consumers think an economic downturn is looming, the 'lipstick index' economic theory argues that sales of more affordable luxury items (such as lipstick) go up.

About 80% of US debt is held by domestic and foreign investors.

Making sense of the complex logistics of product returns

Americans returned over $800B worth of stuff in 2022, more than the entire gross domestic product of some nations. This entertaining, in-depth video dives into the complex logistics of the reverse supply chain and how it works. Estimates peg the...

Student debt has a widespread economic impact

Student debt is no different than the big rent or car payment that comes out of someone’s paycheck every month: Its presence affects that household’s purchasing power. Multiply that household by the 43 million Americans who had outstanding federal loan debt in September 2023, and student debt’s impact becomes considerable.

Explore internet usage data, including how humans consume 1.2 billion years of content yearly

About half this time consists of content from social media platforms, where the average user spends about 18.5 hours weekly. An estimated $3.66T was spent on consumer goods by online shoppers in 2025, though nonconsumer goods, such as flights and hotel stays, greatly increase this estimate.

The Federal Reserve fought the Great Recession primarily with quantitative easing and repurchasing agreements.

The Federal Reserve follows the health of the US economy by tracking the money supply

That includes all of the physical and electronic money in circulation. It tracks not only US coins and bills, but also the money that moves through bank deposits. The Fed uses metrics called trackers to follow different types of transactions through the money supply.

The federal government has spent more money annually than it has collected every year since 2022.

Why does the stock market matter?

Open any newspaper, turn on your local TV news station, or listen to a daily business radio segment, and you’re bound to hear about how the stock market is performing. Netflix created a 17-minute (free) explainer that dives deep into the nitty-gritty of how we got here.

Check the current Consumer Price Index

The Consumer Price Index is a metric that attempts to capture price changes felt by consumers by averaging a basket of about 80,000 items, each weighted to reflect the impact of changes on households.

The overall economic effect of President Trump's 2025 tariffs remains unclear

Researchers from UCLA and Yale found that tariff revenue and gains to US producers largely offset importers' costs—but the broader picture is murkier, as the trade deficit rose, manufacturing jobs declined, and 90% of tariff costs were passed through to importers rather than absorbed by foreign exporters.

The national debt is growing at a faster rate than the economy.

An economic evaluation of US tariffs

Most economists agree that the implementation of large-scale tariffs on foreign goods would hurt both the American and global economies. This video from The Wall Street Journal explains the rationale for tariffs as a tool for domestic job creation, but explains why they may hurt the overall economy.