SAN FRANCISCO — California is now the sixth-largest economy in the world, surpassing France, thanks to a robust state economy and strong US dollar.
California was the world's eighth-largest economy in 2014, Irena Asmundson, chief economist of the California Department of Finance, said in a phone interview on Friday. "California did exceptionally well in 2015."
France is the world's seventh-largest economy with a growth domestic product of $2.42 trillion, and India is the eighth-largest with $2.09 trillion, according to the latest International Monetary Fund data.
California is home to diverse strong economies, including Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Manufacturing and agriculture have performed well despite a severe drought, Asmundson said.
The most populous US state has outpaced the rest of the country on job growth, California's finance department said in its June bulletin this week. Gross state product was $2.46 trillion in 2015, with 4.1 percent of growth in real terms, it added.
US gross domestic product grew by 2.4 percent in 2015. Growth slowed to 0.8 percent in the first quarter of 2016.
America’s third largest state economy – New York with a GDP in 2015 of $1.44 trillion – produced slightly more economic output last year than South Korea ($1.38 trillion).
As a separate country, New York would have ranked as the world’s 11th largest economy last year, ahead of both No. 12 South Korea and No. 13 Russia ($1.32 trillion). Amazingly, it took almost three times as many workers in South Korea (26 million) to produce roughly the same amount of economic output that required only 9.2 million New York workers.
According to Bloomberg, California is home to four of the 10 largest companies in the world, including Facebook and Google parent company, Alphabet Inc.
Thanks to robust tech, agricultural and manufacturing industries, California created more jobs than the next two closest states combine last year, a fact California Gov. Jerry Brown snarkily pointed out to Florida Governor Rick Scott when Scott tried to recruit California companies east on the promise of lower taxes in May.
“I’m writing to welcome you back to California – a state that in the last year has added more jobs than Florida and Texas combined,” Brown wrote to Scott last month. “Rick, a fact you’d like to ignore: California is the 7th largest economic power in the world. We’re competing with nations like Brazil and France, not states like Florida.”
Now that California has bragging rights over Florida, Brazil and France, the next closest rival is the United Kingdom, the world’s fifth largest economy.
The world’s ten largest economies are:
1. United States of America
2. China
3. Japan
4. Germany
5. United Kingdom
6. California
7. France
8. India
9. Italy
10. Brazil
