California's economic growth hit its fastest pace in a little more than two years - but on a national scale, it was just a middle-of-the-pack performance. My trusty spreadsheet reviewed the third quarter report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on state gross domestic product - a broad yardstick of business output. It's an inflation-adjusted measurement of the value of goods and services produced. Annual growth rates are a benchmark for comparing the progress of various economies.
California kept its bragging rights as the world's fourth-largest economy in the latest update on state-level business output. The Golden State economy was producing goods and services at a nation-leading $4.215 trillion annual pace in the second quarter. That's according to the latest estimates of gross domestic product by the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Friday, Sept. 26. GDP is a broad measure of the production of goods and services, often seen as a yardstick of a region's economic vibrancy.