Global| Mar 26 2021State GDP in 2020:Q4
Summary
Every state is reported to have had positive growth in real GDP in the fourth quarter, but there was a wide range of growth. South Dakota led, with a 9.9 percent rate, while DC trailed all 50 states with a 1.2 percent rate of gain [...]
Every state is reported to have had positive growth in real GDP in the fourth quarter, but there was a wide range of growth. South Dakota led, with a 9.9 percent rate, while DC trailed all 50 states with a 1.2 percent rate of gain (Michigan's 1.7 percent was the lowest among the states).
Grain-growing farm states did quite well, with strong growth contributions from agriculture. Given the niceties of allocating farm output by quarters, it's possible that some of the strong quarterly growth rates in states such as South Dakota will be smoothed away in next summer's revisions. Revivified fossil fuel extractions also helped numbers of states where such activity is important. An odd sector was finance. Output was up in every state, but there were a number of unusual strong upside outliers, including Connecticut, Delaware, and Nebraska (New York did well, but not as well as those). Government output—essentially, government employment—varied markedly, ranging from a 1.1 percentage point drag on New Hampshire's growth rate to a .8 percentage point boost to New York (a rare case of extremes being pretty much as one might expect).
All states saw real output for 2020 as a whole drop relative to their 2019 average. Utah was almost unscathed, with a .1 percent decline, while Hawaii—a small state highly sensitive to travel—plunged a full 8 percent. On a national scale, New York's 5.9 percent drop was the most significant; losses in California, Texas, and Florida were noticeably smaller.
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.
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