Markets

These 3 Maps Help to Visualize America’s $18 Trillion Economy

Published

8 years ago

October 12, 2016

Jeff Desjardins

The United States has a $18 trillion economy, which makes it the world’s largest by GDP.

To show its tremendous size, we previously published a visualization of the global economy that carved the world’s economic production into slices based on each country’s contribution to GDP. While this visualization helps to show how large the U.S. economy is in comparison to other nations, it still doesn’t seem to tell the full story.

After all, the United States is geographically vast and diverse, and population is spread out and unevenly distributed. This means production and innovation are both concentrated in some areas of the country, while other parts are clearly more rural.

How can we account for these differences to get a more accurate view of the U.S. economic engine?

3 Maps to Visualize America’s $18 Trillion Economy

Luckily, Mark J. Perry from AEI’s Carpe Diem blog has done some heavy lifting here to help us better understand the size and scope of America’s economy activity.

Here’s three maps that will make you think:

America's $18 Trillion Economy Compared to Countries

The first map redraws state borders to make seven “mega-states” that each have individual economies the size of major countries. California, for example, has an economy the size of France. The whole Northeast has an economy the size of Japan, and so on.

But even states are very diverse in geography – for example, Arizona has 6.7 million people, but more than two-thirds of those people live in the Phoenix metro area.

American Metro Areas Compared to Countries

The second map compares the economies of metropolitan areas with entire countries. As you can see, the aforementioned Phoenix metro area has similar economic output to Portugal.

Meanwhile, the whole corridor from New York through to Washington, D.C. is as big as Canada, Iran, Czech Republic, and Sweden combined.

America's Economy Split in Half

The final map builds on this idea, showing that half of America’s economic output comes just from a selection of metropolitan areas. The other half of America’s $18 trillion economy is based in the large swaths of land in between, including thousands of rural areas, villages, towns, and cities.

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Economy

Economic Growth Forecasts for G7 and BRICS Countries in 2024

The IMF has released its economic growth forecasts for 2024. How do the G7 and BRICS countries compare?

Published

5 hours ago

April 24, 2024

Niccolo Conte

Faded horizontal bar chart visualization of G7 and BRICS countries' real GDP growth forecasts for 2024.

G7 & BRICS Real GDP Growth Forecasts for 2024

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) has released its real gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecasts for 2024, and while global growth is projected to stay steady at 3.2%, various major nations are seeing declining forecasts.

This chart visualizes the 2024 real GDP growth forecasts using data from the IMF’s 2024 World Economic Outlook for G7 and BRICS member nations along with Saudi Arabia, which is still considering an invitation to join the bloc.

Get the Key Insights of the IMF’s World Economic Outlook

Want a visual breakdown of the insights from the IMF’s 2024 World Economic Outlook report?

This visual is part of a special dispatch of the key takeaways exclusively for VC+ members.

Get the full dispatch of charts by signing up to VC+.

Mixed Economic Growth Prospects for Major Nations in 2024

Economic growth projections by the IMF for major nations are mixed, with the majority of G7 and BRICS countries forecasted to have slower growth in 2024 compared to 2023.

Only three BRICS-invited or member countries, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and South Africa, have higher projected real GDP growth rates in 2024 than last year.

Group	Country	Real GDP Growth (2023)	Real GDP Growth (2024P)
G7	🇺🇸 U.S.	2.5%	2.7%
G7	🇨🇦 Canada	1.1%	1.2%
G7	🇯🇵 Japan	1.9%	0.9%
G7	🇫🇷 France	0.9%	0.7%
G7	🇮🇹 Italy	0.9%	0.7%
G7	🇬🇧 UK	0.1%	0.5%
G7	🇩🇪 Germany	-0.3%	0.2%
BRICS	🇮🇳 India	7.8%	6.8%
BRICS	🇨🇳 China	5.2%	4.6%
BRICS	🇦🇪 UAE	3.4%	3.5%
BRICS	🇮🇷 Iran	4.7%	3.3%
BRICS	🇷🇺 Russia	3.6%	3.2%
BRICS	🇪🇬 Egypt	3.8%	3.0%
BRICS-invited	🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia	-0.8%	2.6%
BRICS	🇧🇷 Brazil	2.9%	2.2%
BRICS	🇿🇦 South Africa	0.6%	0.9%
BRICS	🇪🇹 Ethiopia	7.2%	6.2%
	🌍 World	3.2%	3.2%

China and India are forecasted to maintain relatively high growth rates in 2024 at 4.6% and 6.8% respectively, but compared to the previous year, China is growing 0.6 percentage points slower while India is an entire percentage point slower.

On the other hand, four G7 nations are set to grow faster than last year, which includes Germany making its comeback from its negative real GDP growth of -0.3% in 2023.

Faster Growth for BRICS than G7 Nations

Despite mostly lower growth forecasts in 2024 compared to 2023, BRICS nations still have a significantly higher average growth forecast at 3.6% compared to the G7 average of 1%.

While the G7 countries’ combined GDP is around $15 trillion greater than the BRICS nations, with continued higher growth rates and the potential to add more members, BRICS looks likely to overtake the G7 in economic size within two decades.

BRICS Expansion Stutters Before October 2024 Summit

BRICS’ recent expansion has stuttered slightly, as Argentina’s newly-elected president Javier Milei declined its invitation and Saudi Arabia clarified that the country is still considering its invitation and has not joined BRICS yet.

Even with these initial growing pains, South Africa’s Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told reporters in February that 34 different countries have submitted applications to join the growing BRICS bloc.

Any changes to the group are likely to be announced leading up to or at the 2024 BRICS summit which takes place October 22-24 in Kazan, Russia.