Wichita’s growth in gross domestic product

An interactive visualization of gross domestic product for metropolitan areas.

Gross domestic product is the sum of the value of all goods and services produced for a period of time. The Bureau of Economic Analysis makes this statistic available for metropolitan areas. GDP is not the only way to measure the economic health of a region, but it is one way. I’ve gathered the data and made it available in an interactive visualization.

When using the visualization you may select total GDP, or GDP for private industry or government alone. You may select any number of metropolitan areas to appear on the chart. By clicking metro names in the legend, you can highlight or emphasize the series for one metro area. Use Ctrl+click to select more than one at a time.

Of note, recently James Chung delivered a lecture in Wichita. As part of the presentation, he mentioned three areas that he thought were doing things well: Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, and Omaha. A nearby illustration shows the visualization of the growth of GDP for these metro areas and Wichita. You can see that GDP for these areas have grown faster than has GDP for Wichita. (This visualization shows GDP change since the start of the chart, so that the growth of metro areas of different sizes can be compared.)

Another illustration compares Wichita to several cities that were part of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s city-to-city visits. While in some years the visit has been to cities like Austin that have grown rapidly, that is not always the case.

Click here to open the visualization in a new window.

Data is from Bureau of Economic Analysis, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce. Visualization created using Tableau.