IMPRESSIVE

California Passes UK to Become World’s Fifth-Largest Economy

The most populous U.S. state added $127 billion to its GDP from 2016 to 2017.

California’s gross domestic product surpassed $2.7 trillion from 2016 to 2017, making the U.S. state the world’s fifth-largest economy, bigger than that of even the United Kingdom, according to recently released federal data. The most populous U.S. state saw a boom in almost every single economic sector, with a $26 billion growth in real estate and $20 billion in the information sector, according to the California Department of Finance. The state’s economic output is now short of only that of Japan, China, Germany, and the total GDP of the U.S. The last time the state’s economy ranked as the world’s fifth-largest was in 2002.