Kriss Sjoblom, economics and VP for the Washington Research Council, recently took a look at our state's economic performance. After he saw to this post, he contacted me to say, in essence, not so fast. (So you don't have to click through, the earlier post referred to our state's 2007 economic growth of 4.3 percent, third best in the country.)
When he saw me at a meeting yesterday, Kriss handed me this. Using recent federal data, Kriss examined per capita growth in real (inflation-adjusted) GDP by state from 2000 to 2007. On that basis, we don't look so good, coming in 38th, and sliding from 9th in per capita GDP in 2000 to 11th in 2007. Essentially, our population grew faster than the economy.
Interesting data.
And congratulations to the WRC for a successful 76th Annual Meeting yesterday.