San Jose was the second-fastest growing economy among the top 100 US Metro Areas last year, according to a report on 2016 Metropolitan GDP released last week by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
In 2015 the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area generated a gross GDP dollar value of $223.7 billion. In 2016, the metro’s total economic output rose to $236.8 billion, an increase of 5.9%. Among the top 100 US Metros, only Provo, UT saw higher economic growth in that span a time, with a rate of 6.1%.
Provo, however, is still a much smaller economy than San Jose’s, with a 2016 GDP of only $20.4 billion dollars, about a twelfth the size of San Jose’s. San Jose is the 13th largest economy, while Provo is only the 95th. Among the top 15 largest metropolitan economies, San Jose was easily the fastest growing: only nearby San Francisco, with a growth rate of 5.4%, came close.
Seattle and Miami, the eleventh and twelfth-largest metro economies, saw growth rates of 4.3% and 2.6%, respectively. Miami’s economy is only 21% larger than San Jose’s, putting San Jose in a position to overtake it and become the 12th largest Metro economy within a decade, if its growth rates hold.
Despite San Jose’s rapid growth relative to other metro areas, 2016 was a substantially slower year than 2015, when the economy grew by an incredible 10.4%. Indeed, San Jose was the faster-growing of the top 100 Metro Areas in 2015, beating out Provo by a tenth of a percentage point. San Jose also saw faster growth in 2014, with a rate of 7.4%. Still, 5.9% on top of two years of even faster growth is impressive, and still a faster rate than in 2012 or 2013.
According to the BEA’s report, the professional and business services sector contributed the most growth to San Jose’s GDP, accounting for 1.86% of the GDP growth. It should come as no surprise that IT sector was the second largest contributor in Silicon Valley, with manufacturing and finance, insurance, and real estate also making up a large component of the growth.
Here are the complete 2016 GDP rankings for the top 100 US Metro Areas:
