New State-by-State GDP Gains and Losses Released
California has seen some of the nation’s biggest gains. Shutterstock
The states with the largest economies based on real GDP in 2015 are California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania.
North Dakota and Alaska experienced declines in economic growth between 2014 and last year, while Oregon and California saw some of the nation’s biggest gains, according to gross domestic product figures updated by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis on Tuesday.
Real gross domestic product between 2014 and 2015 increased in every state except for North Dakota and Alaska, these latest estimates show. Changes in real GDP—an inflation adjusted measure—varied from 4.1 percent in Oregon and California, to -2.1 percent in North Dakota.
The real GDP growth rate for the entire U.S. was 2.4 percent last year.
New quarterly figures the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Tuesday show that GDP increased in 41 states and the District of Columbia during the fourth quarter of 2015.
During the final quarter of last year, one of the top-growing sectors nationally was the information industry, which grew 10.6 percent. The sector includes a wide variety of fields, like software publishing, telecommunications and motion picture production.
Other leading sectors for the U.S. in the fourth quarter were construction, which grew 7.6 percent, and professional, scientific and technical services, which grew 3.9 percent.
Mining, a sector that covers coal, oil and gas-related industries, shrank about 10.7 percent nationally in the final quarter of 2015, hurting GDP growth during that time period in not only North Dakota and Alaska, but Oklahoma and Wyoming as well.
The five states with the largest economies, based on their real gross domestic product in 2015 were California, Texas, New York, Florida and Illinois.
GDP is a measure of the market value of goods and services produced within a place during a period of time, and is a commonly used indicator of economic health.
Bill Lucia is a Reporter for Government Executive’s Route Fifty. He is based in Washington, D.C.
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