Economic Impact Study

An economic impact study is a commissioned analysis that quantifies how much an industry adds to GDP, employment, wages and tax receipts, usually expressed as direct effects plus multiplier-driven indirect and induced effects. Unlike a ranking or a market-size estimate, it answers a political-economy question - what would disappear if this industry vanished - which is why trade associations rather than statistical agencies typically commission them.

The cataloged instance is NRF Research & Insights' PwC study, The Economic Contribution of the U.S. Retail Industry: a $5.3 trillion annual GDP contribution and 55 million US jobs, dated March 2024 at national plus state-level detail for the United States, distributed as a downloadable PDF (NRF_RetailsImpactReport_March2024.pdf) rather than queryable tables.

The buyer consequence is methodological opacity. An impact study is produced by a consultancy for an advocate, so its multipliers and scope definitions are set by the commissioner, not by a statistical office.

• Headline numbers are not comparable across studies. The $5.3 trillion / 55 million jobs pair comes from one PwC model run for NRF in March 2024; another association's impact figure will use different multipliers, so the two cannot be averaged or trended together. - Granularity stops where the PDF stops. This study reaches state level only; there is no metro, county or congressional-district cut, and no machine-readable table underneath the narrative.

1. Check who produced it and when. Name the consultancy and the date - here PwC for NRF, dated March 2024 - because impact models are not revised on a public schedule and undated copies circulate for years.

1. Confirm the geographic floor before buying for regional work. NRF's coverage field reads 'national and state level for economic impact'; if your question is metro-level, this product cannot answer it.

1. Separate the impact study from the rankings on the same portal. NRF's portal also carries three Kantar-compiled retailer rankings totalling 175 ranked companies per year - company-level sales tables, not contribution estimates, so never blend the two.

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Entries that sit next to it in the catalog:

retailer-rankings are the company-level counterpart on the same NRF portal - Kantar compiles 175 ranked companies a year while the impact study aggregates the whole sector.

broadline-retail data collects the cataloged datasets serving the sector the study measures, from association research to scraped merchandising feeds.