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BEA figures are readily available and are often used by economic agencies in planning decisions.
These figures are based on long-term economic trends. The data from the last several censuses are used to predict a basic trend of growth until a new census is taken and the data reevaluated. This method is unable to account for unexpected changes which may occur within a local economy. Certainly, if the main employer within a locality closes its plant, leaving local residents unemployed, this will have an immediate and depressing effect on local income. A second problem which exists with the BEA figures is the way they are calculated for a particular locality.