State real GDP growth rates in 2024:1 ranged from Idaho’s 5.0% to South Dakota’s -4.2%. Growth tended to be high in the mountain West and the Southeast. Many highly agricultural states in the Plains saw declines, but Illinois, Ohio, Oregon, and Louisiana also saw drops. Pennsylvania is on the verge of becoming the sixth state with current-dollar GDP exceeding one trillion dollars. The five currently above that threshold are California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois; Pennsylvania’s 2024:1 figure was $998 billion, at an annual rate. No other state exceeds $900 billion.
The distribution of personal income growth was comparable to real GDP. South Carolina first with a 9.5% growth rate, while North Dakota’s .6 % was the lowest. It appears that weakness in farm income held down net earnings in the agricultural regions. As always, the distribution of the growth of transfer payments was erratic and influenced the rankings of total personal income growth, but in this instance, generally slower transfer growth in the Plains merely tended to accentuate the effect of weakness in net earnings. with Nevada again on top with a 6.7% growth rate, while Iowa and North Dakota tied for last with each having a growth rate of 0.8%. Over the last few years, the extension and withdrawal of federal transfers connected to the pandemic often grossly distorted movements in state personal income, and the ranking of states. This has become less evident in recent quarters, though the range of annual growth rates for transfers in 2023:4 did run from 8,1% in Mississippi to -5.0% in Arizona. The large drop in Arizona certainly had a visible effect on its overall income growth; Mississippi’s large gain was less meaningful, since other income components there also grew substantially.