Timely data on the economic health of individual states recently came from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The new quarterly state-level gross domestic product (GDP) series begins in 2005 and runs through the fourth quarter of 2013. The map below offers a look at how states have fared since 2005 relative to the economic performance of the nation as a whole.
It’s interesting to see the map depict an uneven expansion between the second quarter of 2005 and the peak of the cycle in the fourth quarter of 2007. By the fourth quarter of 2008, most parts of the country were experiencing declines in GDP.
The U.S. economy hit a trough during the second quarter of 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, but 20 states and the District of Columbia recovered more quickly than the rest. The continued progress is easy to see, as is the far-reaching impact of the tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011, which disrupted economic activity in many U.S. states. By the fourth quarter of 2013, only two states—Mississippi and Minnesota—experienced negative GDP.
The map shows that not all states are growing even when overall GDP is growing, and not all states are shrinking even when overall GDP is shrinking. But if we want to know more about which states are driving the change in overall GDP growth, then the geographic size of the state might not be so important.
Depicting states scaled to the size of their respective economies provides another perspective, because it’s the relative size of a state’s economy that matters when considering the contribution of state-level GDP growth to the national economy. The following chart uses bubbles (sized by the size of the state’s economy) to depict changes in states’ real GDP from the second quarter of 2005 through the fourth quarter of 2013.
This chart shows how the economies of larger states such as California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois have an outsize influence on the national economy, despite some having a smaller geographic footprint. (Conversely, changes in the relatively small economy of a geographically large state like Montana have a correspondingly small impact on changes in the national economy.)
Overall GDP is now well above its prerecession peak. But have all states also fully recovered their GDP losses? The chart below depicts the cumulative GDP growth in each state from the end of 2007 to the end of 2013. The size of the circle represents the magnitude of the change in the level of real GDP between the end of 2007 and 2013. Most states have fully recovered in terms of GDP. (North Dakota’s spectacular growth stands out, thanks to its boom in the oil and gas industry.) However, Florida, Nevada, Connecticut, Arizona, New Jersey, and Michigan had not returned to their prerecession spending levels as of the end of 2013. For Florida, Nevada, and Arizona, the depth of the collapse in those states’ booming housing sectors is almost certainly responsible for the relative shortfall in performance since 2007.
The next release of the state-level GDP data, scheduled for September 26, will provide insight into the relative performance of state economies during the first quarter of 2014 at a time when overall GDP shrank by more than 2 percent (annualized rate). Some analysts have suggested that weather disruptions were a leading cause for that decline. The state-level GDP data will help tell the story.
By Whitney Mancuso, a senior economic analyst in the the Atlanta Fed's research department