The "Collapse" (Their Word, Not Mine) Of The Economy Would Have Been Much Worse Had It Not Been For The Bakken; Go West, Young Man

When the revised 1Q14 GDP numbers came out earlier this week -- you know, the ones that showed the US economy contracted 2.9%. I remarked that the contraction would have been much more severe had it not been for the energy sector, and more specifically the shale oil industry, and even more specifically the Bakken.

Here are the numbers that back that up. McClatchy is reporting:

In 2010, East Coast states made up 38 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, the sum of all goods and services produced. Last year, the East Coast produced 36 percent of the American GDP in dollars, while Midwest states increased by 1 percentage point to 14 percent of the national total. That’s according to an analysis by McClatchy of a report published earlier in June by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, part of the Commerce Department.

North Dakota’s gross domestic product grew 9.7 percent from 2012 to 2013, the most of any state and much higher than the national growth rate over the same period of 1.8 percent, according to the bureau’s report.

There was no way the Bakken, by itself, could have prevented the contraction in 1Q14, but it certainly prevented the numbers from being much, much worse.

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Meanwhile, Rigzone is reporting that while the rest of the US is tending to "age," the midwest energy states are seeing a decline in average of its (legal) residents:

The United States is still growing older, but the trend is reversing in the Great Plains, thanks to a liberal application of oil.

The aging baby boom generation helped inch up the median age in the United States last year from 37.5 years to 37.6 years, according to data released Thursday by the Census Bureau. But a closer examination of those numbers shows that seven states — Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Wyoming — actually became younger.

Credit for the de-aging of the mainland states between 2012 and 2013 goes to the increase in oil and gas exploration in the Great Plains. The Census Bureau offered no reason for the decrease in Alaska and Hawaii.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/25/231459/energy-boom-fuels-economic-growth.html#storylink=cpy