Outdoor Recreation – a Story of Resilience, Contribution, and Commitment

Last week, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released its annual update on how the outdoor recreation sector contributes to state and national economies. We’re approaching 10 years since Congress unanimously passed the REC Act and directed BEA to produce this data. By now, for the industry, it’s like waiting for a report card. And in 2024, the sector showed resilience (data for 2025 will be out in the fall).

On an inflation-adjusted basis, the sector’s contribution to GDP grew by 2.7 percent year over year, while the entire U.S. economy grew a tad faster, at 2.8%. This is despite lingering COVID aftershocks. The longer term shows a brighter picture. Over the past decade, the sector’s contribution to the national economy has increased by 67% compared to 2015.

That’s one of the toplines. Because at Brumidi we lobby for healthy recreation funding, I always scroll down to the data on the government’s contribution. I want to know if the government is doing its part. And deep in the spreadsheets, there are buried a few big aha’s.

For one, all government dollars are extraordinarily well-leveraged. In current dollar terms, the governments’ combined gross output (expenditures) on recreation reached $53.6 billion in 2024. That’s compared to overall expenditures across the sector of $1.3T (trillion)! In other words, every government dollar spent correlates to almost 24 dollars spent by you, me, and the nation’s thousands and thousands of outdoor-related businesses. This is where the story of the sector’s positive financial ROI for government begins.

Then, within this part of the spreadsheet, you find confirmation of what we know intuitively. Since so many of our parks, green spaces, waterways, and bike lanes are local, it’s the state and local governments that spend heavily compared to the USG. In 2024, state and local government expenditures on parks and recreation were $48.5 billion, while the USG spent $5.2 billion. For sure, thanks to bills like the 2020 Great American Outdoors Act, USG spending for the past decade has grown a bit faster than the state and local. But this nearly 10:1 ratio of regional-to-federal spending has been almost constant.

What’s more, when zeroing in on expenditures this way, you see that for every federal dollar spent ($5.2B), you and I and the recreation businesses spend that $1.3T – or 242 times as much. Not too bad an ROI for the USG.