The Center of the U.S. Economy Is in Rural Missouri

America’s economic center has been moving west over the past two decades, according to county-level GDP data released Thursday for the first time by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Over that period, the geographic midpoint of the country’s gross domestic product moved from just outside the small town of Steelville, Missouri (population 1,642) to the outskirts of Hazelgreen, Missouri (population unknown) about 75 miles away. That’s calculated by finding the location in the U.S. where economic output produced in any direction around it is roughly the same.

Some of this slow but unmistakable shift can be attributed to a population that’s growing faster in many western states. But it’s also due to the changing makeup and distribution of the American economy.

Looking at which counties have grown the most, in dollar terms, since 2001 reveals the economy’s ongoing transformation from a manufacturing powerhouse to a knowledge-based one—and a tussle among trillion-dollar metropolitan hubs to pull the economy in their direction. So far, the West Coast is winning.

The highest-growth areas in the West are in parts of Southern California (Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties), the San Francisco Bay area (Santa Clara) and King County, home to Seattle. Collectively, those five counties added more than $1 trillion in GDP over 17 years. GDP grew the most on the East Coast in Manhattan, Middlesex County outside Boston, Miami-Dade County, Atlanta’s Fulton County and the District of Columbia—adding $662 billion.

The economic transformation of the U.S. over the past two decades reveals a tug-of-war among key industries. The finance and insurance industry skews to the east, with its geographic midpoint near Evansville, Indiana—more than 200 miles northeast of the overall midpoint. The geographic center for the information sector has been pulled about 230 miles northwest since 2001 by fast-growing tech hubs like Seattle and Silicon Valley, which are home to the four biggest U.S. companies by market capitalization: Apple, Microsoft, Google parent Alphabet and Amazon.

Manufacturing, still a major driver of GDP and exports, appears to be moving in tandem with the overall economy, but the same can’t be said for construction or the arts. The former has doubled back on itself several times, coinciding roughly with the 2009 stimulus package that pumped tens of billions of dollars on infrastructure investment, while the latter has actually moved in the opposite direction of the economy overall.

The geographic midpoint of the mining and oil extraction industry, meanwhile, has careened around the state of Oklahoma, no doubt pulled in varying degrees by the fracking booms in the Dakotas and neighboring Texas.

Los Angeles County in California experienced the most nominal GDP growth since 2001, and was first for growth in the construction and arts, entertainment and recreation industries. Houston’s Harris County saw the most growth in manufacturing—while manufacturing hubs in parts of North Carolina and Virginia experienced some of the biggest losses.

Correction: The story has been updated to more precisely locate the 2001 and 2018 GDP midpoints in Missouri.