The big story of the recovery from the Great Recession has not been the problems of industry but those of state governments. This chart came from an article entitled “Budget Battles Roil Straitened States” in the February 25 issue of The Wall Street Journal.
The legend is missing, but Utah is in the best category in this chloropleth.
Wisconsin, which is aggressively reacting to their problems, is in the second to best group.
N.B. The gray states provided no data, so they aren’t necessarily the good ones.
Note that the right hand side of this map is missing from the online version, but is in the print version.
There was another graphic on that same page of hard copy, and it is not available online. The data is here. It showed that Utah is a little worse than average on where state tax revenues stand: the average is 89% of peak levels, and we’re at 85%. It also showed state pension liabilities as a percentage of GSP, and here we’re a little better than average: 5% vs. 7%.
I noticed on the data that there isn't anybody below 70% of peak revenues except Arizona who is at 35%. Is that a typo, or is it really that bad in Arizona? Perhaps they had an unusually high peak?
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