Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Financial Accounts of the United States

The quarterly Statistical Release Z.1, “Financial Accounts of the United States,” or Financial Accounts, is published about 10 weeks following the end of each calendar quarter and is organized into the following sections:

• Matrices summarizing transactions and stocks outstanding across sectors, and tables on debt growth and net national wealth
• Transactions in financial assets and liabilities, by sector and by financial instrument
• Stocks outstanding of financial assets and liabilities, by sector and by financial instrument
• Balance sheets, including nonfinancial assets, and changes in net worth for households and nonprofit organizations, nonfinancial corporate businesses, and nonfinancial noncorporate businesses
• Supplementary balance sheet tables for the household sector, nonprofit organization sector, and the household and nonprofit organization sector with additional equity and debt security detail, and tables on savings and the personal sector
• Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts (IMA)

The IMA relate production, income, saving, and capital formation from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s (BEA) national income and product accounts (NIPA) to changes in net worth from the Financial Accounts on a sector-by-sector basis. The IMA are published jointly by the Federal Reserve Board and the BEA and are based on international guidelines and terminology as defined in the System of National Accounts (SNA).

Federal Reserve Board staff have taken many steps over the past several years to conform the Financial Accounts with the SNA guidelines. Nonetheless, a few important differences remain, in particular, the following in the Financial Accounts:

• The purchase of consumer durables is treated as investment rather than as consumption.
• Nonfinancial noncorporate businesses (which are often small businesses) are shown in a separate sector rather than being included in the household sector.
• Some debt securities are recorded at book value rather than market value.

Tables numbering structure

In the June 11, 2026, release of the Financial Accounts, tables were renumbered to align more closely with the SNA coding guidelines for sectors and instruments. This structure enhances the international comparability of the U.S. Financial Accounts and improves flexibility when sectors or instruments are added to or removed from the accounts.

Each table number follows a standardized structure:prefix + sector/instrument code + subsector detail (if applicable) + suffix

Prefixes identify the general category of table:

• M - Matrix tables showing aggregated data across sectors

• D - Debt tables

• S - Sector tables (using SNA sector codes)

• F - Financial instrument category tables (using SNA instrument codes)

The prefix is followed by an alphanumeric code corresponding to the SNA sector or instrument category. For matrix and debt tables showing combined domestic and foreign sectors, personal sector tables, and discrepancy tables, special Z.1 sector codes are used. When the Financial Accounts provide additional subsector or instrument detail beyond the SNA coding structure, a second alphanumeric code is included.

Suffixes indicate the table type:

• t - Transactions

• s - Stocks of assets or liabilities outstanding (previously called levels)

• b - Balance sheets

• r - Changes in net worth

• g - Growth rates

• e - Equity and debt detail

Special suffixes are used for specific table types:

• i.a and i.q - Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts (IMA) annual and quarterly tables, respectively

• t.c and s.c - Coded matrix tables for transactions and stocks outstanding, respectively

Example:Table S122.1.t reports transactions for U.S.-chartered depository institutions. In this table number, “S122” corresponds to SNA sector S122 (depository institutions), “.1” indicates this is the first of four depository institution subsectors presented in the Financial Accounts, and “t” denotes that the table reports transactions.

Concepts of Stocks and Transactions in the SNA and the Financial Accounts

The stock of an asset or liability (also referred to as the “level” or “stock outstanding”) measures the value of the asset or liability in existence at a point in time. In the Financial Accounts, stocks are reported as of the end of each calendar quarter. In the SNA, the change in the stock from one period to the next is called the economic flow, and can be decomposed into three broad elements: transactions, which measure the exchange of assets; revaluations, which measure holding gains and losses; and other changes in volume, which measure discontinuities or breaks in time series due to disaster losses or a change in source data or definition. In practice, other volume changes are relatively rare, and revaluations occur only for series carried at market value (such as corporate equities and mutual fund shares), so for many series the change in the stock is equal to transactions.

Growth Rates

Growth rates calculated from stocks outstanding include revaluations and other changes in volume. In order to isolate the effect of transactions on growth of a given asset or liability, users should calculate the ratio of transactions in a given period to the stock outstanding in the preceding period. Growth rates in table D3.g are calculated by dividing transactions at a seasonally adjusted annual rate from table D3.t by seasonally adjusted stocks outstanding at the end of the previous period from table D3.s. Growth rates calculated from changes in unadjusted stocks may differ from those in table D3.g.

Seasonal Adjustment

Seasonal factors are recalculated and updated with the December release of third-quarter data. Series that exhibit significant seasonal patterns are adjusted. Seasonal factors are generated using the X-13-ARIMA seasonal adjustment program from the U.S. Census Bureau, estimated using the most recent 10 years of transaction data. Due to distortions of seasonal patterns caused by financial crises, seasonal factors for affected series are extrapolated using pre-crisis data until several years of post-crisis data are available. Seasonally adjusted stocks outstanding shown in table D.3 are derived by carrying forward year-end stocks by seasonally adjusted transactions.

Data Revisions

Data shown for the most recent quarters are based on preliminary and potentially incomplete information. A summary list of the most recent data available for each sector is provided in a table following these notes. Nonetheless, when source data are revised or estimation methods are improved, all data are subject to revision. There is no specific revision schedule; rather, data are revised on an ongoing basis. In each release of the Financial Accounts, major revisions are highlighted at the beginning of the publication.

Discrepancies

The data in the Financial Accounts come from a large variety of sources and are subject to limitations and uncertainty due to measurement errors, missing information, and incompatibilities among data sources. The size of this uncertainty cannot be quantified, but its existence is acknowledged by the inclusion of “statistical discrepancies” for various sectors and financial instruments.

The discrepancy for a given sector is defined as the difference between the aggregate value of the sector’s sources of funds and the value of its uses of funds. Sources of funds are gross savings less net capital transfers paid and net increase in liabilities; uses of funds are capital expenditures and the net acquisition of financial assets. If a sector’s sources of funds are greater than its uses of funds, the sector is a net lender of funds in the accounts. In the reverse case, the sector would be a net borrower of funds. Most of the data for deriving gross savings come from the BEA’s NIPA. For a financial instrument category, the discrepancy is defined as the difference between the measurement of funds raised through the financial instrument and funds disbursed through that instrument. The relative size of the statistical discrepancy is one indication of the quality of the underlying source data. Note that differences in seasonal adjustment procedures sometimes result in quarterly discrepancies that partially or completely offset each other in the annual data.

Financial Accounts Guide

Substantially more detail on the construction of the Financial Accounts is available in the Financial Accounts Guide, which provides interactive, online documentation for each data series. The tools and descriptions in the guide are designed to help users understand the structure and content of the Financial Accounts.

Each input and calculated series in the Z.1 is identified according to a unique string of patterned numbers and letters. The series structure page of the guide provides a breakdown of what the letters and numbers represent in the series mnemonics. Some data submissions to international organizations are also available in the guide. The guide is updated with the quarterly release and is available online:

www.federalreserve.gov/apps/fof

Enhanced Financial Accounts and Data Visualization

Additional supplementary information is available online in the Enhanced Financial Accounts, which augment the Financial Accounts with finer detail, additional types of activities, higher-frequency data, and more-disaggregated data. Links to the Enhanced Financial Accounts are available from both the Financial Accounts Guide page and the main release page. In addition, interactive online data visualizations are available for selected components of the Financial Accounts and Enhanced Financial Accounts. Links are available also on the same pages.

Publication webpage

The publication and instructions for downloading the data are available at: www.federalreserve.gov/releases/Z1.