Data Dive: The Outdoor Recreation Economy (2024)

Every year, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) puts out a report on the Outdoor Recreation Satellite Account (OREC), diving into the economic impact of the industry. This year's headline is: $1.3 trillion in gross output, $696.7 billion in value added, 2.4% of GDP, 5.2 million jobs. Those are the numbers you'll see in all the press releases and advocacy materials for the next 12 months. They're real numbers, but they deserve a bit more context.

OREC isn’t a true "industry,” it’s a satellite account that aggregates economic activity across standard industry categories. The report takes industries like Manufacturing, Retail Trade, Agriculture, etc, and then figures out what parts of that data applied to outdoor recreation.

The definition is probably broader than most people expect. Yes, there’s hiking, and camping, and biking and stuff. But also gardening supplies. Kite flying. Pickleball. Oil and gas extraction. Golf. Flights. Boat manufacturing. Car rentals. So when you hear a "$1.3 trillion outdoor economy," what they're referencing is an amalgamation of connected economic activity that was somehow related to outdoor recreation; the BEA’s broad definition includes “all recreational activities undertaken for pleasure that occur outdoors.”

When I look at the trends over the last few years, this is one of the bigger stories. Real GDP for outdoor recreation grew 2.7% in 2024, compared with 2.8% for the overall U.S. economy. It’s the first time outdoor recreation has grown slower than the broader economy since before the pandemic.

There was huge growth and interest after the pandemic but the deceleration has been precipitous (and predictable). In last year’s analysis, I wrote: “It’s encouraging to see that the growth of outdoor recreation continues to outpace the economy, but we’ll have to see in upcoming years if it can continue to maintain this trajectory.” Well, that growth has stalled a bit. Outdoor recreation is still growing, but in a much less exciting way.

A 2.7% growth rate is fine. It's not a crisis. But for the last few years, the story has been "outdoor recreation is booming, growing faster than the economy, an economic force." That story is over. What we're seeing now is convergence with GDP growth.

The $1.3 trillion is a nominal number. Adjusted for inflation, it's closer to $990 billion, and the nominal number is growing more than the inflation adjusted one. A chunk of what gets reported as "growth" is just price increases. Lift tickets cost more. Hotel rooms cost more. The industry is raising prices faster than it's growing participation.

There’s an interesting example in the ski industry. From 2017-2024, the value added increased 28%, but real value (inflation adjusted) actually declined 7%. I was digging into some ski industry data earlier this week (thanks to a Cody Townsend thread) that showed ski visits were down for 2023/24. And over that period skiing declined 2.5% in nominal dollars, but fell 6.8% in inflation-adjusted dollars. It’s probable that price increases in everything from lift tickets to lodging and travel are masking lower performance.

Boating/fishing remains the largest conventional outdoor recreation activity at $38.4 billion in value added. It's been essentially flat for the last two years.

RVing continues a post-pandemic contraction trend, down from a peak of $31.2 billion in 2022 to $27.5 billion now. Last year I noted that production was down 47% and the resale market was getting hammered. That trend has accelerated. New registrations and shipments continue to fall, and some manufacturers are laying off staff. Used RV prices have dropped to pre-pandemic levels, and are increasingly hard to sell. By every measure of the manufacturing and retail market, RVing is in a sustained downturn, although a more optimistic analysis might attempt to position this as a “correction” (it’s not).

So why does the BEA still show $27.5 billion in value added? Well, RVs are still expensive, even with reduced sales, and it's capturing all economic activity related to RVing: the millions of RVs already on the road, campground spending, fuel, maintenance, parts, accessories, insurance, and the travel and hospitality spending that RVers generate. New unit sales are falling, but the existing ownership is still large. The market is absolutely a bit vulnerable though, and those decreasing sales are likely to show up in the economic data in upcoming years more strongly.

Hunting, shooting, and trapping posted the largest gain among conventional activities, jumping 16.5% YOY. The category has nearly doubled since 2019, a trajectory that stands in contrast to flattening of growth curves elsewhere in outdoor recreation.

I’m not as tapped into this world, so it’s harder for me to nail down what’s driving this growth. But, election-year purchase spikes are a well documented phenomenon. Recreational and competitive shooting is also growing as a social hobby, particularly among urban residents and women, and competitive shooting clubs are growing.

Water sports are seeing a big decline. "Other conventional water activities" (paddling, surfing, SCUBA, wakeboarding, whitewater) dropped 31% from 2020 levels, driven by the same dynamic hitting RVs: a pandemic demand shock created a glut of durable equipment that doesn't need replacing. According to the Outdoor Industry Association’s (OIA) 2024 participation report, participation is actually up, nearly 30 million Americans went paddling last year, but the economic value is falling because people already own the gear or can get it secondhand.

There’s a disconnect between the importance we place on hiking, backpacking, camping and what the impact actually is. It's one of the most important nuances to understand what the "outdoor industry" actually is, especially when people use the economic impact numbers from this particular report to bolster whatever point they’re trying to make.

The climbing, hiking, and tent camping category is the 5th largest of conventional activities, and the 9th largest if you include other activities. It’s responsible for 1.1% of total outdoor recreation value added.

The activities that tend to dominate outdoor media, brand marketing, and cultural conversation in one bubble of the outdoors generate less economic value than golf, amusement parks, festivals, hunting, and “productive activities” which include things like gardening. Now, you might say, “well, those things aren’t actually the outdoor industry,” but that’s a whole different conversation. If you want to use the $1.3T number, they are. If you want to strip those out, the whole story looks a lot less compelling.

A huge percentage of hiking and camping gear is manufactured overseas, while things like boats and RVs sold in the U.S. are also manufactured domestically. Those things get an economic multiplier in reports like these because there’s impact from the manufacture, sale, and use (and they’re expensive).

There’s an interesting paradox here as well: hiking, climbing, and camping doubled in absolute value from $3.8B in 2019 to $7.8B in 2024. But its share of total outdoor recreation value is stuck at 1.1%, where it’s been for the last 3 years. The activity is growing, but the other things that make up the report are growing too.

Supporting activities, primarily trips and travel, expanded from 50.1% to 51.5% of the total. Conventional outdoor activities as a whole shrank from 30.7% to 29.5%. So even if hiking sees growth, its relative economic importance is unchanged because the money spent on travel and hospitality infrastructure around all outdoor activities is growing faster.

Supporting activities (travel, tourism, transportation, lodging, food and beverage, and shopping) now account for 51.5% of total outdoor recreation value added, up from 51.2% in 2023 and continuing a steady climb since the COVID-era (when people bought gear but didn’t travel).

Transportation alone generated $106.2 billion in value added, more than all conventional outdoor activities combined. The pattern is consistent across categories: people spend more getting to outdoor recreation and staying there than they do on the activities themselves.

The outdoor recreation economy is, at its core, a travel and hospitality economy. This shouldn't be surprising. People don't just drive somewhere to hike. They eat, they shop, they stay somewhere. The cute local coffee shop, the boutique motel, the brewery with the nice patio…that's where most of the economic impact actually gets created.

If we break this down, the stereotypical RVer generates more economic value than the ultralight backpacker. The RV itself is domestically manufactured. The fuel, the campground fees, the restaurants and grocery stores at every stop, the longer trip durations, the shopping along the way. An RVer touches transportation, lodging, food, retail, and manufacturing in a single trip. A classic Boulderite buys a pair of trail runners (manufactured overseas), drives to the mountains, car camps for free, hikes or runs on public land, and maybe grabs a coffee in town afterward. The trail itself doesn't generate economic value. Yes, it’s the reason people visit. But economically, the people who park at the viewpoint are generating similar value as the people on a 10-mile hike or overnight camp.

The states where outdoor recreation represents the largest share of GDP remain consistent: Hawaii, Alaska, Montana, Vermont, and Wyoming. These are economies where outdoor tourism is a major component of overall visitation. When outdoor recreation represents 5-6% of state GDP, small shifts in visitation or participation have big ripple effects.

Alaska's jump from 4.6% to 5.3% represents the largest movement among the top states, likely driven by the continued growth of cruise tourism. Hawaii moved in the opposite direction.

The 2023 Maui wildfires devastated Lahaina, the island's primary tourism hub, and the fallout lasted well through 2024. Visitor arrivals to the state dropped, their workforce shrank, and increased housing costs made it hard to recruit replacements. Airlines pulled capacity from underperforming Maui routes, which reduced seats to the state overall. All of that created a pretty vicious loop. When your economy is 6.1% outdoor recreation, a disruption like this hits differently than it does in a state at 2%.

California, Florida, and Texas lead in raw dollar volume, but outdoor recreation is a small slice of their overall GDPs (2-4%). What they do dominate is amusement parks — Florida and California together control over half of the national amusement park portion of the outdoor recreation economy. Theme park complexes like Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and Six Flags produce more economic value than entire "traditional" outdoor activity categories.

When outdoor recreation represents a significant share of a state's economy, the risks become more concentrated. Colorado at 3.3% ($18.1B total) and Indiana at 3.3% ($17.1B) provide useful examples. Both states derive similar GDP shares from outdoor recreation, but the makeup and vulnerabilities are different.

Colorado's outdoor economy is the most snow-dependent in the country. It's the economic engine for mountain communities across the state, driving accommodation, food, retail, and transportation spending. But that concentration is also exposure — when snowpack collapses, as this season has hammered home, so does the entire supporting tourism ecosystem.

I’ve been a bit confused by Indiana the last few years, but never really dug into why they have a high proportion of GDP from outdoor rec. Turns out, Indiana's GDP is mostly driven by RVs, specifically manufacturing. The state produces roughly 80% of North American RVs. TIL. This means their outdoor recreation economy is highly exposed to manufacturing cycles and consumer discretionary spending. The decreases in RV sales do not bode well for future reports.

The outdoor recreation economy is massive, even adjusted for inflation. Reports like this continue to push states toward adopting outdoor recreation offices and treating the sector as a serious economic driver. But the political interests within "the outdoor industry" are more fragmented than most coverage suggests.

The RV Industry Association's PAC recipients for the 2024 cycle: seven of eight are Republicans, most with single-digit lifetime environmental scores from the League of Conservation Voters. Two represent Indiana's RV manufacturing corridor. Bruce Westerman, Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and lead architect of NEPA reform legislation, is on the list. Adrian Smith (R-Neb) has fought EPA emissions standards.

The American Sportfishing Association's recipients split between parties. On the Democratic side it includes Jared Huffman (ranking member on Natural Resources, vocal critic of Westerman's NEPA overhaul) and Joe Neguse (Boulder, big supporter of public lands). On the Republican side, Garret Graves has pushed for expanded offshore drilling and Buddy Carter is broadly pro-fossil fuel.

These industries can support public lands and environmental protections, but they’re not environmental advocacy organizations, nor are they as left-leaning as much of the hiking/climbing/camping contingent. They back whoever is useful to their industry. Sometimes that aligns with ecosystem protection (healthy waterways mean healthy fisheries) and sometimes it doesn't.

Let’s do some quick “back-of-napkin” math. If you narrowed the definition “outdoor recreation” to just “conventional” outdoor activities, it would represent $371 billion in gross output.

Supporting activities (travel, lodging, food, transportation) aren’t broken out by specific activity, but if we assume a proportional contribution, you'd get to roughly $757 billion. That’s assuming conventional activities generate supporting spend at the same rate as "other" activities like amusement parks, golf, and festivals, but I think it’s probably more likely that those generate proportionally more air travel, travel, lodging, and food spending than hiking or fishing trips. That would mean the real number for a conventionally-defined outdoor recreation economy is more like $600-700 billion. Still significant. But nowhere near the $1.3 trillion headline.

The narrative needs updating. The post-pandemic boom is over. Growth is flattening. The activities that drive the most economic value are not the ones that dominate the cultural conversation. And the political interests within "the outdoor industry" are more fragmented than some coverage suggests.

If the outdoor industry wants to wield its economic influence effectively, it could start by acknowledging that the $1.3 trillion number includes theme parks in Orlando, RV factories in Elkhart, and gun shops in an election year. That's not a criticism, it's just what the number actually measures. I think advocacy gets weaker, not stronger, when it papers over those details.