State Economies

                                  State Economies

America’s largest state economy is California, which produced more than $3 trillion of economic output in 2019, more than India’s GDP last year of $2.9 trillion. Consider this: California has a labor force of 19.5 million compared to India’s labor force of 519 million (World Bank data). California as a separate country would have been the 5th largest economy in the world last year, ahead of India ($2.81 trillion), UK ($2.74 trillion) and France ($2.71 trillion).

America’s second-largest state economy – Texas – produced nearly $1.9 trillion of economic output in 2019, which would have ranked the Lone Star State as the world’s 9th largest economy last year. GDP in Texas was slightly higher than Brazil’s GDP last year of $1.85 trillion. However, to produce about the same amount of economic output as Texas required a labor force in Brazil (106 million) that was 7.5 times larger than the labor force in the state of Texas (14 million).

America’s third-largest state economy – New York with a GDP in 2019 of $1.73 trillion – produced slightly more economic output last year than the entire country of neighboring Canada ($1.70 trillion). As a separate country, New York would have ranked as the world’s 10th largest economy last year, ahead of No. 11 Canada ($1.70 trillion), No. 12 Russia ($1.64 trillion) and No. 13 Korea ($1.63 trillion).

Florida ($1.09 trillion) produced about the same amount of GDP in 2019 as Indonesia ($1.1 trillion), even though Florida’s labor force of 10.5 million is less than 8% of the size of Indonesia’s workforce of 134 million.

Even with all of its oil resources and wealth, Saudi Arabia’s GDP in 2019 at $779 billion was below the GDP of US states like Pennsylvania ($814 billion) and Illinois ($898 billion).

Overall, the US produced nearly 25% of world GDP in 2019 ($87.2 trillion), with only about 4.3% of the world’s population. Four of America’s states (California, Texas, New York and Florida) produced more than $1 trillion in output and as separate countries and each would have ranked in the world’s top 17 largest economies last year. Together, those four US states produced nearly $8 trillion in economic output last year, and as a separate country would have ranked as the world’s third-largest economy.

Adjusted for the size of the workforce, there might not be any country in the world that produces as much output per worker as the US, thanks to the world-class productivity of the American workforce.