California Is Now The 5th Largest Economy In The World, Surpasses The UK


05/05/2018



New U.S. federal data made public Friday claimed that the economy of the United Kingdom was surpassed to become the fifth largest economy in the world by the economy of the state of California in the U.S.
 
The data said that compared to 2016, $127 billion was added opt the gross domestic product of California in 2017 and accounted of the total GDP going past $2.7 trillion. At the same time, there was a slight shrinkage in the economy of the U.K.  - in part because of exchange rate fluctuations during the same time period and when measured in U.S. dollars.
 
With a population of almost 40 million, California’s economy is simply immense according to the data and the region boats of being the home to the salad bowl of the country primarily found in the Central Valley agricultural heartland, having the world's entertainment capital in Hollywood and a flourishing technology sector in Silicon Valley. The economy of the region also shows the substantial turnaround since the Great Recession in the total U.S. economy.
 
Irena Asmundson, chief economist at the California Department of Finance said that the higher GDP of California was supported by all of the major economic sectors barring the agricultural sector. Financial services and real estate led the pack at $26 billion in growth, followed by the information sector, which includes many technology companies, at $20 billion. Manufacturing was up $10 billion.
 
It was way back in 2002 that California had managed to become the world's fifth largest economy for the last time before 2017. In the following years, the region slid down to as low and 10ht place because of the economic recession. However, since then, its GDP had grown by $700 billion and the economy has added 2 million jobs.
 
The total GDP of the United States, China, Japan and Germany are the only economies that are now ahead of California's economic output. Between 2012 and 2017, California had accounted for about 16 percent of the job growth in eth U.S.  while it has a population share of about 12 percent of the entire country. According to state economists, over that five-year period, there was a growth in the share of California in the national economy from 12.8 percent to 14.2 percent.
 
Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at University of California, Los Angeles and director of UCLA's Ettinger Family Program in Macroeconomic Research. Said that worker productivity is the driving force behind the strong economic performance in California in contrast to other industrialized economies. He said that even though the GDP of the U.K. is now just lower than that of California, there are 25 million more people in the U.K.
 
San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego are the major economic hubs for California and are primarily situated coastal metropolises surrounding these cities.
 
"The non-coastal areas of CA have not generated nearly as much economic growth as the coastal areas," Ohanian said.
 
(Source:www.cnbc.com)