The Outdoor Recreation Economy, 2024

The Bureau of Economic Analysis tracks outdoor recreation as a satellite account across 95 industry categories. The definition is broader than most people expect.

Conventional outdoor activities are the usual suspects: boating/fishing, RVing, hunting/shooting, snow sports, moto/ATV, hiking/camping/climbing, biking, and equestrian.

Other outdoor activities include things you might not immediately expect: golf courses, tennis courts, amusement parks, water parks, gardening supplies, kite flying, pickleball, paintball, festivals, concerts, sporting events, and more.

Supporting activities make up the majority at 51.5%. This is all the travel, tourism, transportation, lodging, food, and shopping related to outdoor recreation. Flights to national parks. Hotel stays near ski resorts. Meals in mountain towns. Gas for the road trip to Disney. Retail purchases along the way.

This is the big story. Real GDP for outdoor recreation grew 2.7% in 2024, compared with 2.8% for the overall U.S. economy. That's the first time outdoor recreation has trailed the broader economy since before the pandemic. The deceleration has been steady and predictable: 10.7% in 2022, 5.3% in 2023, now 2.7% in 2024. The pandemic rebound is fully spent. Outdoor recreation is growing, but it's no longer outpacing the economy. It's converging with it.

A 2.7% real growth rate is healthy. But it changes the narrative. For the last few years, the story has been "outdoor recreation is booming, growing faster than the economy, a rising economic force." That's over. What we're seeing now is normalization. Outdoor recreation claimed a larger percentage of GDP over the past decade, but that expansion has plateaued - it's been flat at 2.4% for the last two years.

The "$1.3 trillion outdoor economy" you see in press releases refers to gross output - the total value of goods and services produced by outdoor recreation businesses. In 2024, that figure was $1,257.6 billion, up 3.4% from $1,216.4B in 2023. Adjusted for inflation, that's $990.3B in real terms (2017 dollars). The gap is $267.3 billion, or 21% of the headline number.

Since 2017, nominal gross output has grown 54%. Real gross output has grown 21%. The widening gap reflects inflation across transportation, lodging, food, equipment, and services. A chunk of what gets reported as "growth" is just price increases.

Boating/fishing remains the largest conventional outdoor recreation activity at $38.4 billion in value added. It's been essentially flat for two years after significant pandemic growth. RVing continues its post-pandemic contraction, down from a peak of $31.2 billion in 2022 to $27.5 billion now. Production is down 47%, motorhome shipments have hit levels lower than May 2020, and the used market is flooded with inventory. But the BEA still shows $27.5 billion because it's capturing all economic activity related to RVing: the millions of RVs already on the road, campground spending, fuel, maintenance, parts, and the travel spending that RVers generate.

Hunting, shooting, and trapping posted the largest gain among conventional activities, jumping 16.5% to $16.5 billion. The category has nearly doubled since 2019, a trajectory that stands in stark contrast to the broader normalization happening across outdoor recreation. What's driving it? Election-year purchase spikes are well documented. But the more structural shift is that recreational and competitive shooting is growing as a social hobby, particularly among urban residents and women. This isn't just traditional hunters buying more guns. It's a broadening of the participant base.

Toggle to "All Activities" and the picture changes dramatically. Golf and tennis generate $28.1B. Amusement parks $21.7B. Gardening $15.8B. Each of these dwarfs hiking, climbing, and camping combined at $7.8B (just 1.1% of the total). The activities that dominate outdoor media, brand marketing, and cultural conversation generate less economic value than golf, amusement parks, festivals, hunting, and even gardening.

There are structural reasons for this gap. A huge percentage of hiking and camping gear is manufactured overseas, while 95% of boats sold in the U.S. are made domestically. The manufacturing multiplier for boating is enormous. But the gap between hiking's cultural visibility and its economic footprint remains striking. When organizations talk about the "outdoor industry" as a political force, it helps to know that the economic weight sits in boating, RVing, hunting, and golf. Not in trail running shoes and ultralight tents.

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 destinations and staying there than they do on the activities themselves.

The outdoor recreation economy is, at its core, a travel and hospitality economy. Think about a typical RV trip. 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.

Alaska's jump from 4.6% to 5.3% represents the largest movement among the top states, likely driven by post-pandemic cruise tourism recovery. Hawaii moved in the opposite direction, dropping from 6.3% to 6.1%. The August 2023 Maui wildfires devastated Lahaina, the island's primary tourism hub, and the effects rippled through all of 2024. Visitor arrivals to the state dropped 3.3% for the year. When your economy is 6.1% outdoor recreation, a disruption like this hits differently than it does in a state at 2%.

By raw dollar volume, California leads at $87.9B, followed by Florida ($65.3B) and Texas ($59.4B). But these represent just 2.2%, 3.8%, and 2.1% of their respective GDPs. They dominate on total impact through population, tourism infrastructure, and breadth of activities. What Florida and California do dominate is amusement parks - together they control 54% of the national amusement park outdoor recreation economy. Florida generates $6.5B in amusement park value added, California adds $5.3B. These two states' theme park complexes produce more economic value than entire traditional outdoor activity categories.

Colorado (3.3%, $18.1B) vs. Indiana (3.3%, $17.1B): same GDP share, different risk. Colorado's outdoor economy is heavily weighted toward snow sports ($1.6B from snow alone). Indiana's is driven by RV manufacturing (roughly 80% of North American RVs). Colorado is exposed to climate variability. Indiana is exposed to manufacturing cycles.

Colorado accounts for 21% of national snow activity value added at $1.6B - nearly double California's $731M. Snow sports alone are $1.6B of Colorado's total $18.1B outdoor economy. That's 9% of the state's outdoor recreation concentrated in snow.

A huge percentage of Indiana's outdoor economy is related to RV manufacturing. When national RVing peaked at $31.2B in 2022 and declines 12% to $27.5B by 2024, Indiana feels it directly. Production is down, the used market is flooded, and some dealers are closing. The headline $27.5B RVing number includes spending by millions of existing RV owners still on the road, but new unit sales-which drive Indiana's economy-are collapsing.

From pandemic surge ($36.2B in 2022) to sustained contraction (-12% from peak)

If you want to know what the outdoor recreation economy looks like when you strip out those "other" activities and focus on conventional outdoor rec (the things most people actually mean when they say "outdoor industry"), we need to do some quick math.

$600-700 billion is still significant. It's still a meaningful share of the economy. But it's not $1.3 trillion. When organizations cite that top-line number in congressional testimony or policy advocacy, they're bundling together economic interests that often don't align. Theme parks and trail runners. RV manufacturers and climbers. Golf courses and kayakers.

The boom is over, growth is normalizing, and a significant chunk of the headline number is inflation. The activities that drive the most economic value are not the ones that dominate the cultural conversation.