WASHINGTON – Rhode Island ranked 45th nationwide last year for economic growth, but 22nd for per-capita production, according to a report today from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The state’s real gross domestic product grew 0.1 percent to $38.66 billion after rising 1.0 percent in 2006 and 2.7 percent in 2005.
New England’s real GDP – the region’s total output of goods and services, adjusted for inflation – grew 2.1 percent last year to $636.22 billion after growing 2.8 percent in 2006 (READ MORE) and 2.1 percent in 2005.
“Economic growth slowed in most states and regions of the United States in 2007,” the BEA said in its report. “Real GDP growth [adjusted for inflation] slowed in 36 states, with declines in construction and finance and insurance restraining growth.”
The sharpest deceleration was seen in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada. “Each of these states had experienced faster real growth than the nation since 2003, but slowed dramatically between 2006 and 2007, to rates below the national average,” the bureau noted.
Only three states, however, actually saw their economies contract in 2007. They were Delaware (-1.6 percent), Michigan (-1.2 percent) and New Hampshire (-0.1 percent), whose declines the BEA blamed on slumps in the finance, insurance, construction and real estate industries.
Meanwhile, the national economy grew 2.0 percent in 2007 to $11.47 trillion, slowing from revised increases of 3.1 percent in 2006 and 3.0 percent in 2005. The 2005 rate matched the national average for 2002 through 2006.
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“Real economic growth either slowed substantially or was unchanged in all eight BEA regions. …. Even the Southwest region – which led all regions in growth in 2006 and 2007 – slowed to 3.7 percent, down from 5.1 percent in 2006,” the BEA said. “The two regions that did not experience a slowdown in 2007– the Great Lakes and Plains – were already the slowest–growing regions in 2006.”
The slowest growth last year was in the Great Lakes region (0.5 percent), the Southeast (1.5 percent) and the Far West, while the fastest growth was in Southwest (3.7 percent), the Rocky Mountain states (2.9 percent) and the so-called Mideast states (2.8 percent). The sharpest slowdown was in the Far West, where last year’s real-GDP increase of 1.9 percent was less than half the region’s 2006 growth rate of 4.1 percent.
On a per-capita basis, the real GDP nationwide was $38,020 last year, while the New England average was $44,603. Rhode Island’s per-capita real GDP in 2007 was $36,543, or 96 percent of the national average, giving the state a rank of 22nd nationwide and 4th among the six New England states.
Delaware, part of the “Mideast” region, remained No. 1 for real GDP per capita, with a total last year of $56,496 or 117 percent of the national average.
Connecticut was No. 2 nationwide and No. 1 in New England, with a per-capita real GDP of $51,911. Massachusetts was No. 4 nationwide and No. 2 in the region, at $47,351 per person. New Hampshire ranked 19th nationally and third in New England, with $37,375. Vermont (31st nationwide, up from 35th the year before) and Maine (42nd) lagged the region, with per-capital totals of $34,197 and $30,282, respectively.
Additional information – including the 11-page gross domestic product report, “State economic growth slowed in 2007” – is available from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis at www.bea.gov.
