I posted this in another topic:
It is calculated by modeling trade between all mapped worlds.If you go to the trade volume maps for each sector in the wiki you can see the trade modeled using the "Gravity Model" which is the standard trade modeling used by economists in the real world. Here is link to the "Spinward Marches" https://wiki.travellerrpg.com/File:Spinward_Marches_Sector.pdf