State GDP and Personal Income in Q1 2025
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State real GDP growth rates in 2025:1 were weak, ranging from -6.1% in Iowa and Nebraska to 1.7% in South Carolina. Farm output is estimated to have dropped sharply in the nation’s midsection, which explains very weak numbers in the Plains (in reality, of course, excluding seasonal adjustment, farm output is minimal in that section in the winter and estimates are problematic). Other areas were soft, most notably the Pacific Coast and the Northeast (a pronounced drop in financial output weighed heavily in New York, for instance). It is, of course, a bit hard to blame losses in output in Plains state agriculture on the surge in imports, which adds further to the puzzle of understanding the national GDP decline.
Personal income was stronger with growth rates ranging from Washington’s 3.2% to North Dakota’s 12.7%. In this case, the Plains states were the leaders, greatly aided by higher federal payments to farmers. Increases in transfer payments were unusually rapid, in part reflecting the annual Social Security COLA, as well as ACA tax credits.
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.