State personal income growth ranged from annual rates of 6.1 percent in DC and New York to -2.7 percent in Maine. The drop in Maine related to a one-off large decline in transfers; Arkansas, number 49 with a meager .4 percent growth rate, was weak in all major categories.
In general, states in that grew notably faster than the national average were in the Northeast and Far West, and slow-growing states in the middle of the nation. There were exceptions: Kentucky grew at a 5.8 percent clip and Kansas 5.0 percent, while South Carolina (another state affected by a drop in transfers) grew at only a 1.4 percent rate.
The range of the annual rate of growth for net earnings (employee compensation plus noncorporate business earnings—a measure likely more closely related than overall person income to current economic activity—was also wide, with Florida’s 7.1 percent tops, and North Dakota at the bottom at -.8 percent.