Valuing America's Public Lands 2023

As steward for much of America’s public lands, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages some of the nation’s most historic and scenic landscapes, as well as vast natural resources, for the benefit of all Americans. These public lands include rangelands, forests, mountains, arctic tundra, and deserts and encompass 10 percent of the nation’s surface and approximately one-third of its subsurface mineral resources.

Through balanced public land management, the BLM authorizes responsible resource use while conserving the natural and cultural legacy of iconic landscapes and sustaining healthy ecosystems that provide clean air and water and support biodiversity. 

The interactive charts and other information below provide a snapshot of how authorized use and management of BLM-administered lands supported more than $262 billion in economic output and 1,000,000 jobs across the country in fiscal year (FY) 2022. These uses also generated substantial revenue for the U.S. Treasury as well as state and local governments. <<Much of the data on this web page is based on the BLM's Valuing America's Public Lands 2023 publication (PDF).>> 

The figures and tables below report the economic contributions stemming from specific resource uses supported by BLM-managed lands and by BLM’s labor and non-labor expenditures.

Metrics for these contributions include: 

• Jobs: an annual average of the number of full-time, part-time, and seasonal employees. Jobs do not equal full-time equivalents.
• Output: the market value of production of a good or service. Output can also be expressed in terms of total sales value, or in terms of the cost to produce a good or service. 

Each resource use supports direct and total contributions.  The figures report TOTAL JOBS and TOTAL OUTPUT, while the files at the bottom of the page report both direct and total contributions. 

• Direct contributions: reflect the economic activity directly attributable to the resource use in question, such as the money spent by visitors, or mining jobs supported by the production of federal minerals.
• Total contributions: include direct economic activity plus its ‘ripple effect’ throughout the economy. These ripples include economic activity in sectors that support activity in directly affected sectors, and economic activity generated by employees spending their labor income. 

Using the interactive charts

The charts are dynamic and interactive. Hover your mouse or tap with your finger to see the value of a bar or a pie wedge. You can toggle sectors on the pie chart by clicking them. This is helpful to enhance the view of smaller values that appear with larger values of data.  Full tables of the data in the dynamic charts are provided below.