Personal income: methodology

Total personal income by county, from the BEA Regional accounts (table CAINC1, line 1), beginning in 1969.

What it counts. Income received by, or on behalf of, the residents of a county: wages and salaries, employer contributions to pensions and insurance, proprietors' income, rental income, dividends and interest, and transfer receipts such as Social Security and Medicare. It is measured by place of residence, not place of work, so a Nevada county's figure includes what its residents earn commuting elsewhere.

It is not take-home pay. Personal income is before income taxes and includes imputed items residents never see as cash, notably employer-paid insurance contributions and the imputed rent of owner-occupied housing.

BEA publishes this in thousands of dollars; we store dollars, converting by the UNIT_MULT exponent BEA supplies with every value.

Revisions. BEA restates its regional estimates every year, and the restatement reaches back: a figure for 2019 is not the figure that was published in 2019. We do not overwrite what came before — each run stores its values under a new vintage, so a number cited last year stays retrievable after BEA revises it. This is the dataset the vintage model exists for.

Nominal dollars. Published as current dollars for the year in question, with no deflation and no inflation adjustment of ours. Comparing 1969 to 2024 directly compares two different dollars.