In our ranking of the economies of the states and DC, we looked at six measures of economic health.
Each measure was rescaled to allow us to compare them to one another. Technically, we calculated z-scores for each state on each measure, which rescales each variable based on its average and standard deviation.
To make the combined ranking, we added together the six indicator z-scores for each state to create an overall economic index.
Here are the sources for each of our measures:
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- December 2017 unemployment rate:
- Local Area Unemployment Statistics
- Percent change in nonfarm payroll jobs, December 2016–November 2017:
- Q3 2017 GDP per capita:
- estimates of the GDP of each state and DC
- Census Bureau's estimates for the July 1, 2017, population
- Q3 2017 GDP growth:
- December 2017 average weekly wage:
- State and Metro Area Employment, Hours and Earnings
- Change in average weekly wage, December 2016–December 2017