Last updated on 2013.06.09
The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released its data on gross domestic product by state for 2012. The good news is that no state experienced a recession last year except for Connecticut, and that recession was tiny, –0.1%.
The bad news is that South Dakota was awfully close to a recession.
We tied Delaware, New Mexico, and Wyoming for the lowest positive GDP change, just 0.2% over 2011. The U.S. as a whole enjoyed 2.5% GDP growth. Bakken-frackin' North Dakota led the nation with a 13.4% boom. (For perspective, in over two decades of go-go-growth, China has beat that percentage once, in 1992.) But without an oil boom, the People's Democratic Republic of Minnesota still beat the national rate of economic growth by a full percentage point.
What sandbagged us? Farming. Actually, the killer category is agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting. Those industries together dropped 2.03 percentage points from South Dakota's GDP. Nationally, ag etc. nicked only 0.04 percentage points off GDP; in the Plains, it cut only 0.28 percentage points off GDP. Better send more crop insurance, Rep. Noem!
South Dakota's strongest growth came in counting stuff and making stuff. Finance and insurance contributed 0.77 percentage points to the state GDP. Durable goods manufacturing added 0.59 percentage points.
And for those of you who keep complaining that government is getting bigger... well, you're half wrong and half right. Government shrank, taking 0.04 percentage points out of the national GDP. But government did add to GDP growth in 24 states, including South Dakota, which saw government add 0.07 percentage points to our anemic growth.
I see that, even with the DFL "anti-business" party in control, MN still did much better than the Republican, probusiness, minimal taxes SD. Hmm. Per capita. Perhaps treating employees well really does pay off? Perhaps spending money on education really does pay off? Isn't it worth a try?