The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the following chart showing how the size of each state’s economy changed in 2013 — winners in blue, losers in yellow:
Now, this isn’t per-capita income growth — a lot of the changes in the size of various states’ economies is due to shifts in population. Nonetheless, in part, people move where the jobs are. And it’s fairly clear where the U.S. economic recovery is really happening, viewed on a regional basis: western natural-resource states (note the Angola of the Great Plains, North Dakota, growing at a 9.7 percent clip for the whole year). Meanwhile, the West Coast isn’t doing as badly as some might have you believe, say, California is doing. And a few innovative red states are also looking good: Indiana compares well with neighbor Illinois, and North Carolina, in the midst of a conservative-governance revolution, is one of the brighest spots in the southeast. (Another, West Virginia, is home to some natural-gas development.)