Since the Great Recession ended in 2010, real GDP has grown twice as fast in the West as in the Northeast, about 50 percent faster than in the Midwest, and a third faster than in the South. 6 But there is another distinction to the western economy, one that many in this audience know well, that brings these high-flying results down to earth.
While the good times are typically very good in the West, the bad times are usually pretty bad, and that was certainly true during the Great Recession. From 2008 through 2010, the western economy contracted four times as much as the average for all of the United States.