Today, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is releasing prototype quarterly gross domestic product (GDP) by state statistics for 2005–2014. The quarterly GDP by state statistics are released for 21 industry sectors and are in both current and inflation-adjusted chained (2009) dollars.

The new data are intended to provide a fuller description of the accelerations, decelerations, and turning points in economic growth at the state level, including key information about the impact of industry composition differences across states. Relative to the August 2014 release, the new prototype statistics incorporate new and revised source data and cover an additional year of economic activity.

Statistics for the first quarter of 2015 are not being released as BEA continues to evaluate its methodology based on data users' comments and evaluations received after the first release of prototype quarterly GDP by state statistics last September.

Highlights

The following highlights for 2014 demonstrate how the new quarterly GDP by state statistics supplement the detail on state-level economic activity provided by annual GDP by state statistics.

In 2014:

• Real GDP increased in all eight BEA regions. However, in the first quarter of 2014 GDP declined in five of the eight regions. The Plains region declined the most primarily due to a decline in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting.
• The Southwest region was the fastest growing region primarily due to strong growth in mining during the third quarter.
• North Dakota was the fastest growing state, but a slowdown in mining contributed to much slower real GDP growth rates in the last two quarters compared with the peak growth rate in the second quarter.
• Mississippi and Alaska declined. However, both of these states ended 2014 with growth in the fourth quarter. Growth in Mississippi was primarily due to strong growth in nondurable goods manufacturing and Alaska primarily due to growth in mining.
• Most states experienced quarters of both positive and negative real GDP growth. However, in a few states, such as Utah and Washington, real GDP consistently grew over all four quarters.

Tables 1–3 show these results in more detail; complete detail is available on BEA's website at www.bea.gov.

Next Steps

BEA plans additional outreach with data users to assess the new prototype statistics. Provided that user evaluations are positive, we plan to release new statistics for the first quarter of 2005 through the second quarter of 2015 in December.

Availability of Data on BEA Website

Prototype statistics of current-dollar and real GDP for each state and for the 21 industry sectors may be found on BEA's Regional Economic Accounts webpage (/regional/index.htm#news).

More information on the statistics and the methodology will appear in an article in an upcoming issue of the Survey of Current Business, the monthly online journal of the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Explanatory Notes

Definitions. GDP by state is the state counterpart of the Nation's gross domestic product (GDP), the Bureau's featured and most comprehensive measure of U.S. economic activity. GDP by state is derived as the sum of the GDP originating in all the industries in a state.

Statistical convention. Quarterly estimates are expressed at seasonally adjusted annual rates. Percent changes are calculated from unrounded data and are annualized.

Vintages. Quarterly GDP by state is consistent with the annual GDP by state released in June 2015 and the Annual Industry Accounts' quarterly GDP by industry released in July 2015. These statistics do not incorporate the July 2015 annual revision of the national income and product accounts.

Relation of GDP by State to U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). An industry's GDP by state, or its value added, in practice, is calculated as the sum of incomes earned by labor and capital and the costs incurred in the production of goods and services. That is, it includes the wages and salaries that workers earn, the income earned by individual or joint entrepreneurs as well as by corporations, and business taxes such as sales, property, and Federal excise taxes--that count as a business expense.

GDP is calculated as the sum of what consumers, businesses, and government spend on final goods and services, plus investment and net foreign trade. In theory, incomes earned should equal what is spent, but due to different data sources, income earned, usually referred to as gross domestic income (GDI), does not always equal what is spent (GDP). The difference is referred to as the "statistical discrepancy."

Quarterly GDP by state for the U.S. differs from the GDP in the national income and product accounts (NIPAs) and thus from the Annual Industry Accounts' GDP by industry, because the U.S. GDP by state excludes federal military and civilian activity located overseas, which cannot be attributed to a particular state.