About this guide
This interactive documentation is a guide to the data compiled and published as
part of the “Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States” (Z.1) data release
and the Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts. These data are published quarterly
about 10 weeks after the end of the quarter. The Z.1 presents the financial
flows and outstandings for sectors in the U.S. economy as well as selected
balance sheets and supplemental tables.
The Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts present a series of accounts that relate
production, income and saving, and capital formation from the national income
and product accounts and financial transactions and asset revaluations from the
Flow of Funds Accounts to changes in net worth calculated from the balance
sheet. These accounts are based on international guidelines and terminology
spelled out in the System of National Accounts 1993 (revised in 2008).
Features of the Z.1 Guide
The tools and descriptions within this guide help users explore the structure
and content of the Z.1 and the Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts. Importantly,
it allows users to search for series, browse tables of data, and identify links
among series within these accounts. It also provides descriptions of each of the
published tables and information on the source data underlying each series.
Although this guide is separate from the release of the quarterly Z.1 data, it
is also updated quarterly and is consistent with the most recently published
data.
The navigation options on each page provide access to Home, Advanced Search, All
Tables, and Series Structure pages, Release Highlights, and Code Changes.
The Home page allows a user to do a basic search of series names and
descriptions for flow of funds series or to browse tables. The Advanced Search
page allows additional search options. The All Tables page lists all the
published tables in the Flow of Funds Accounts and in the Integrated
Macroeconomic Accounts. From there, the user has access to information about a
specific table. Within tables, a user can click on individual series names and
view a “series analyzer” for that series. Each table also includes a text
description, which can be printed or copied, and a link to a PDF of the table as
shown in the official release.
Each series is identified according to a unique string of patterned numbers and
letters. The Series Structure page provides a breakdown of what the letters and
numbers represent in series mnemonics. The relationships between different
components of a series (for example, levels, seasonally adjusted annual rate
flows, unadjusted flows, seasonal factors, and so on) are also described on the
Series Structure page.
With each Z.1 release, major data and structural revisions are highlighted at the beginning of the publication. The Release Highlights page consolidates these highlights in a searchable format for all releases beginning with 2004q1. The Code Changes page lists changes beginning with 2009q4 to flow of funds mnemonics in a sortable and searchable format.
