State GDP by Industry

The BEA tracks GDP by industry for every state — revealing that no two state economies look alike. Nationally, finance, insurance, and real estate is the largest sector at $4.79 trillion (20.5% of real GDP), followed by professional and business services ($3.47T), trade ($2.61T), government ($2.59T), and manufacturing ($2.36T). But these national averages mask enormous variation at the state level.

Manufacturing is 10.1% of US GDP on average. In Indiana, it is 26.4%. In New York, it is roughly 5%. The information sector is 7.3% nationally — but 21.9% in Washington and 14.4% in California. Mining is 0.8% nationally but 17.2% in North Dakota. America doesn’t have one economy. It has 50 different ones.

The national industry map reveals an economy dominated by services. The top three sectors — finance/insurance/real estate, professional services, and trade — account for nearly half of all GDP. Manufacturing, despite its outsized cultural importance, has fallen to fifth place among private sectors, behind government.

The information sector at $1.70 trillion is the fastest-growing major sector, having more than tripled in real terms since 1997. It is also the most geographically concentrated: California, Washington, and Massachusetts produce 40% of the national total.

The manufacturing dependence chart reveals which states still rely on the factory floor. Indiana at 26.4% is the most manufacturing-dependent major economy in America — more than one in four dollars of its GDP comes from making things. Michigan (17.7%) and Ohio (14.6%) follow. These states’ fates remain tied to manufacturing in a way that California, New York, and Florida are not.

Texas is a striking case of diversification. Despite its energy reputation, mining is only 8.8% of its GDP. Texas also has significant manufacturing (petrochemicals, electronics, food processing), professional services, and trade. If you removed Texas’s entire mining sector, it would still be the second-largest state economy by a wide margin. California is the mirror image: its economy is so dominated by information and real estate that manufacturing ($382B nominal) represents less than 10% of its output.

Washington’s information sector — essentially Amazon and Microsoft plus their ecosystems — accounts for 21.9% of the state’s entire GDP. No other major state is as dependent on a single sector. California’s information share (14.4%) is lower only because the state economy is so large that even $476 billion gets diluted.

These three states — CA ($476B), WA ($154B), MA ($52B) — produce $682 billion in information sector GDP, or 40% of the national total of $1.70 trillion. The geographic concentration of the tech economy is the defining economic fact of 21st-century America.