The chart above shows the foreign direct investment (FDI) in dollars for each US state in 2017. Five states accounted for half of the foreign inflows in the US: California, Texas, Illinois, Colorado, and Missouri.
Findings
- The difference between the state with the most FDI, California, and the state with the least, West Virginia, is $41,615,000,000.
- California has 1892.59 times the FDI that West Virginia does.
- The median FDI in the 39 US states is $2,887,000,000 and the mean $6,429,000,000.
- Ten states accounted for three-quarters of all FDI in the US in 2017: California, Texas, Illinois, Colorado, Missouri, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, and Florida.
Caveats
- All figures are rounded to the nearest whole.
- The Bureau of Economic Analysis did not provide data for 11 states in order to prevent disclosure on individual companies. These states are Arkansas, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wyoming.
- Note that FDI fluctuates wildly from year to year and that the numbers shown in the table only represent FDI for 2017. For instance, Illinois received $43 billion just the year prior which would have ranked it above California in this table, and Pennsylvania received just under $30 billion which would have ranked it just under Texas in this table, so this table only represents one year and should not be taken to infer typical FDI inflows to any state on any other given year.
Details
The highest ranking Northeastern state was ranked sixth overall and it is also the only not to have a state in the top four.
The bottom 29 states combined received less than one-quarter of the FDI into the US in 2017.
Sources
US Bureau of Economic Analysis. 2018. "New Foreign Direct Investment in the United States: 2017." Accessed September 16, 2018. https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2018-08/fdi0718rs.pdf.