National Live Economy Indicators

Variables measured

• Series identifier, agency and programme
• Period and published level
• Unit and seasonal-adjustment basis
• Retrieval timestamp and source URL

Provenance

Every observation in this dataset comes from one of the sources below. The identifiers are the ones the issuing agency publishes, so any figure here can be checked against the agency's own release.

• CPI-U, admission to movies, theaters and concerts

  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Consumer Price Index · CUSR0000SS62031, CUUR0000SS62031 · Index (1982–84 = 100)

  BLS publishes CPI index levels as final and recalculates seasonal factors on an annual schedule, so recent seasonally adjusted history can change. Live Index stores whatever the series returns at retrieval and does not reconcile it against earlier retrievals.

• CPI-U, all items

  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Consumer Price Index · CUSR0000SA0 · Index (1982–84 = 100)

  BLS publishes CPI index levels as final and recalculates seasonal factors on an annual schedule. Live Index stores the values returned at retrieval.

• Payroll employment, performing arts companies (NAICS 7111)

  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Current Employment Statistics · CES7071110001 · Thousands of jobs

  BLS describes the most recent CES months as preliminary and revises them in later releases, and benchmarks the series annually. Live Index stores the values returned at retrieval and flags a point as preliminary only when the source marks it.

• Promoters of performing arts, sports and similar events (NAICS 711300)

  U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics · NAICS 711300 · Employment count; U.S. dollars per hour and per year

  BLS cautions that OEWS estimates from different reference periods are not designed to be compared as a time series; each release supersedes rather than revises the prior one.

• Personal consumption expenditures: live entertainment, excluding sports

  U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis · NIPA underlying detail, table 2.4.5U · NIPA 2.4.5U · Millions of dollars, seasonally adjusted at annual rates

  BEA revises underlying detail estimates on its published annual and comprehensive NIPA revision schedules; recent months are the most likely to change.

Methods applied

• Stored as published — Every observation is stored with the value the issuing agency released for that period, and is replaced only when the agency revises it.
• Year-over-year change — The percentage change between a stored level and the stored level twelve months earlier.
• Relative price index — The ratio of two stored price indices, rebased so their first shared period equals 100.
• Recovery ratio against February 2020 — The latest stored payroll level expressed as a percentage of the stored level for February 2020.
• Mean-to-median wage spread — The difference between the published mean and median hourly wage for the same reference period.

What this dataset cannot show

• The admissions price series combines movies, theaters and concerts. Concert-specific price behaviour cannot be isolated from it.
• Payroll employment counts jobs on establishment payrolls and excludes the self-employed and contract workers who make up a large share of live-music labour.
• The promoter wage and employment estimates come from an annual survey whose vintages the issuing agency does not intend to be read as a time series.
• Household spending measures consumer outlay on admissions, not industry revenue, and excludes travel, lodging and hospitality.

Release notes

Aug 16, 2026

Promoter employment and wage estimates aligned to the current OEWS vintage; earlier vintages are superseded rather than revised.

Aug 1, 2026

Household spending on live entertainment added from the BEA underlying detail accounts, with the all-items price index retained as the general comparison series.

Access

This dataset is released. Every series it contains is stored as the source agency published it, with agency, programme, series identifier, observation period, unit, seasonal-adjustment basis and retrieval timestamp attached to each figure. Revisions are corrected in place. A period the agency has not published is absent rather than estimated.

Machine-readable files are generated from the same stored observations the pages render, so a figure in a download cannot diverge from a figure on a chart.

• Admissions prices vs. consumer pricesJSONCSV
• Performing arts employmentJSONCSV
• Promoter and live-event workforceJSONCSV