With all the concern about US policy and local impacts I took a look at some simple trends in GDP for both to see what we can see.
Comparing ND and the US
North Dakota Metro Area Growth
It is a fun time to be an economist with an interest in data, and it has nothing to do with election policies because, as we all know, those have nothing to do with data anyway (zing!). The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its GDP by Metro Area report this week (available here). The first question many would have is: why do we care about a report that covers 2015, that is in the past?
Thinking about ND GDP
So the BEA release (follow this link to the data) this week revealed a large decline in North Dakota GDP from 2014 to 2015. Not a real surprise. As a minor note, I prefer to use the quarterly data instead of the annual data, not because it tells a very different story, but there are some distinctions. That is what I will be using in this discussion. I am also looking at the real GDP data to control for inflation changes over this time.
Mining & Ag GDP Shares in North Dakota
Many times people asked me about the relative importance of the agriculture sector and the mining sector so I thought I would show some current data. Now the coal industry output remains almost the same over this time frame, so the oil sector is responsible for the growth. The data run from 2005Q1 to 2015Q3 and the lines display each sector as a share of total GDP (private and public sector).
The basics of oil in the ND economy
There is a big deal about understanding the impacts of oil price changes on the state economy given the legislative session underway in Bismarck. I am obviously all for such efforts. To that end I have a few graphs to offer up. Let’s consider the share of the private industry component of North Dakota Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Here is a first picture to consider: