Download States Show Broad Growth, Concentrated Challenges In First Quarter

States Show Broad Growth,
Concentrated Challenges In First Quarter
First Quarter GDP Numbers Reveal Thriving BIGGEST MOVERS – STATE GDP 4TH
Coasts, Struggling Interior
QUARTER 2015
By Jeffrey L Garceau
TOP FIVE:
July 29, 2016
This week, the U.S. Bureau of Economic
Analysis released their Gross Domestic Product
numbers for each state and region for the first
quarter of 2016, which saw increases in GDP for
37 states plus the District of Columbia. The aggregate change for the U.S. as a whole for first
quarter GDP was a growth rate of 1.2%, down
from 1.7% in 2014. These U.S. numbers are
slightly different from the numbers commonly
reported for the nation in other reports, as they
do not include overseas economic activity of the
Federal government.
States are grouped by the BEA into eight
separate geographical regions. Looking at the
top and bottom performers in the fourth quarter, we see that two of the top three states, Oregon and Washington, are both in the Far West
region. Colorado at number four is in the
Rocky Mountain region, directly east of the Far
West region. Arkansas, the top performer, and
New Hampshire, number five, are in the South
East and New England regions, respectively.
Michigan, Arizona, Utah, Maine, and Maryland make up the rest of the top ten states. All
together, three BEA regions, New England,
Rocky Mountain, and Far West have two states
in the top ten.
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Arkansas – 3.9%
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Oregon – 3.9%
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Washington – 3.9%
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Colorado – 3.0%
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New Hampshire – 2.9%
BOTTOM FIVE:
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West Virginia – -2.5%
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Iowa – -2.6%
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South Dakota – -2.8%
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Wyoming – -4.9%
North Dakota – -11.4%
Looking at the lower performing states in
first quarter GDP growth takes us to the nation’s interior. Low oil prices continued to
have negative impacts on the state economies
of the northern Rocky Mountain and Plains
regions. North Dakota, Wyoming, and West
Virginia are among the top ten states in terms
of oil, gas, and mining as a percentage of their
state economies, according to work done by
Lucy Dadayan and Donald Boyd at the
Rockefeller Institute of Government.
As you can see from data courtesy of
Bloomberg, crude oil bottomed out below $30 a
barrel in the first half of Q1 2016. Oil recovered
to peak at over $50 a barrel in the second quarter, but has lost over 19% of its value since that
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peak as of 07/29. We will see to what extent recovering oil prices help these hard-hit states,
particularly North Dakota, which has seen double-digit percentage GDP losses in three of the
past five quarters going back to the beginning of
2015.
The map below is provided courtesy of the
Bureau of Economic Analysis, and breaks out
HOW REGIONS RANK
MuniNet ranked the eight regions categorized by the Bureau of Economic Analysis by
growth rate for the first quarter GDP of 2016,
and compared to the growth rates in the fourth
quarter of 2015 and corresponding rankings.
We highlighted which states fell or rose in the
rankings; the Southwest and Plains region held
each region. The colors define tiers of performance,
and illustrate the significant movements in the
Rocky Mountain and
Plains regions. Michigan,
Arizona, and Kansas all
outperformed all other
states in their respective
regions. With the exception of Alaska, all oceanic
coastal states experienced
positive growth. New
England and the Mideast
regions
saw
positive
growth in every state.
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overall national figures. Clear clusters of strong
and weak performing states are revealed. Our
state economies influence he we perceive the
country is doing. However, economists are
looking at other factors, debating whether GDP
is the best measurement of economic
performance. Access to the full set of data provided by the BEA can be found here.
steady in the seventh and eighth spots respectively. We also pointed our the biggest movers.
The Far West and Rocky Mountain regions each
jumped up two spots, from third and fourth in
Q4 2015 to first and second in Q1 2016. New
England, although still seeing positive growth,
fell from being the top performing region last
quarter to fourth in Q1.
Taking a deeper look at the data shows
much going on underneath the surface of the
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