GDP Growth by State [Updated April 2023]

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the monetary market value of all final goods and services made within a geographic location during a specific period. It includes all private and public consumption, investments, the foreign balance of trade (exports are added to GDP, imports are subtracted) and government outlays. GDP is an overall measure of domestic production; therefore it is used as a snapshot of a country or region’s economic health.

GDP growth rate is the increase in GDP from quarter to quarter. The GDP growth rate is important for government entities, which use it to determine which monetary policies to implement, and businesses, which use it to guide their business strategy. A very high GDP growth rate is not always good, as it could be an indicator of environmental impacts or an increase in income disparity, or inflation. In these cases, the government entities would use the GDP growth rate to implement monetary policy to slow down the growth.

The United States GDP was $20.50 trillion in 2018 with a growth rate of 2.9%. As with many other things, GDP varies greatly in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, with some states having GDPs that rival entire countries. For example, Texas’s economy of $1.8 trillion is larger than the economy of global superpower Russia.

In 2018-2019, all fifty states saw GDP growth. There were significant negative GDP growth rates in all states in 2019-2020, but they all saw positive GDP growth in 2020-2021. This major fluctuation across the country was due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021-2022, forty-two states saw GDP growth, two states had no change in GDP, and six states had decreased GDP. Idaho saw the greatest GDP growth of 4.9% after an impressive GDP growth of 5.8% in 2020-2021. Tennessee also had two years of GDP growth: 8.6% in 2020-2021 and 4.3% in 2021-2022. Florida is the only other state that saw GDP growth of at least 4%. Most states had GDP growth between 1% and 4%. Only South Dakota, California, West Virginia, and Mississippi had growth of less than 1%.

Maryland and New Hampshire saw no change in their GDP in 2021-2022. New Hampshire had a large growth of 8.6% in 2020-2021, however. Wyoming, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Iowa, Louisiana, and Alaska all had GDP decreases. These ranged from -0.1% in Wyoming to -2.4% in Alaska. Alaska was also the state with the least GDP growth in 2020-2021.