Global| Jan 10 2020State GDP
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Summary
The state GDP figures for Q3 were heavily influenced by gains in refining and other industries using petroleum feedstocks. Texas was the fastest-growing state, with its real output up at 4 percent annual rate, with its growth led by [...]
The state GDP figures for Q3 were heavily influenced by gains in refining and other industries using petroleum feedstocks. Texas was the fastest-growing state, with its real output up at 4 percent annual rate, with its growth led by strong gains in nondurable manufacturing and mining. Other oil and gas producing states, such as Alaska, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and New Mexico also saw strong gains in the mining sector, though energy producers more dependent on fracking and coal (North Dakota, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania) saw less impetus from this factor.
Washington and Utah were the only other states with annualized growth rates above 3 percent. The Northeast was the weakest area: Delaware's real output was unchanged, and New York and West Virginia both saw a meager .5 percent rate of real growth. New York was held back by a marked contraction in the state's financial output (a sketchily measured sector) while West Virginia saw construction output tumble. New Jersey bucked the tide in the Northeast, with the Garden State growing at a 2.3 percent rate—slightly above the national 2.1 percent pace. It seems likely that the national turnaround in refining benefitted New Jersey.
Over the last four quarters Texas was, by a wide margin, the state with the highest real GDP growth—a 4.5 percent gain, well above Utah's 3.7 percent. Western states were again the growth leaders, with South Carolina's 2.8 percent rise the largest in the East, but ranking only 10th in the nation. Growth has generally been quite subdued in the Northeast and Midwest, and real output in both Delaware and West Virginia is reported to have fallen over the last year.
Charles Steindel
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Charles Steindel has been editor of Business Economics, the journal of the National Association for Business Economics, since 2016. From 2014 to 2021 he was Resident Scholar at the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey. From 2010 to 2014 he was the first Chief Economist of the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, with responsibilities for economic and revenue projections and analysis of state economic policy. He came to the Treasury after a long career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he played a major role in forecasting and policy advice and rose to the rank of Senior Vice-President. He has served in leadership positions in a number of professional organizations. In 2011 he received the William F. Butler Award from the New York Association for Business Economics, is a fellow of NABE and of the Money Marketeers of New York University, and has received several awards for articles published in Business Economics. In 2017 he delivered Ramapo College's Sebastian J. Raciti Memorial Lecture. He is a member of the panel for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Survey of Professional Forecasters and of the Committee on Research in Income and Wealth. He has published papers in a range of areas, and is the author of Economic Indicators for Professionals: Putting the Statistics into Perspective. He received his bachelor's degree from Emory University, his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a National Association for Business Economics Certified Business EconomistTM.