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Throckmorton County, population 1,440, doubled its GDP in 2023

Are you wondering how your county did last year? I'm here to help. Here is real GDP growth for the 20 biggest counties in the US:

Silicon Valley did well, with all of its component parts in the top ten (Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San Francisco counties). My hometown of Orange County did the worst. Here's a map of all 3,114 counties:

The central Midwest, from Nebraska down to Texas, had the strongest regional growth. The upper Midwest, from Minnesota to Illinois, seems to have done the worst.

Among all counties, the highest growth was in Throckmorton County, TX (+125.8%). The worst growth was in Lincoln County, WA (–39.6%).

Throckmorton County is a tiny speck near the Texas panhandle that's been losing what small population it had for the past century:

How does a county like this double its GDP in a single year? Did they discover oil? Become home to a libertarian free city? Play a trick on the BEA? Some enterprising reporter needs to parachute in and figure out what the story is. It might be fascinating.

UPDATE: A reader suggests the answer can be found here:

As electricity demand rises across Texas, Enel Green Power has installed a new wind farm and battery storage project in Throckmorton County. The wind farm was first up and running in March, but now the county is benefiting from the project as well. Clark Bixler, senior development manager at Enel Green Power, said it’s providing over $57 million in tax revenue over its lifetime along with around 20 long-term jobs.

Ah. Throckmorton's GDP rose from $71 million to $160 million, and presumably it was the wind farm that generated the additional $89 million. That money all goes to Enel Green Power, headquarters Rome, but by the rules it counts as output from Throckmorton County. I guess.

Anyway, cancel the parachute drop.

17 thoughts on “Throckmorton County, population 1,440, doubled its GDP in 2023

  1. MrPug

    Regarding Throckmorton I'd be curious if immigration helped it in the same way the pet eating Haitians helped Springfield, OH rebound. After all, the population data is 4 years old now so, who knows, maybe an influx of immigrants occurred. It wouldn't take many to increase the population of a 1400 person town.

    And all that chart of the 20 larges counties provides is more proof that California is a socialist anti-capitalist dystopian hellscape.

    1. Joseph Harbin

      A socialist anti-capitalist dystopian hellscape indeed:

      In large counties (...greater than 500,000 in 2023):

      --GDP ranged from $17.7 billion in Pasco County, FL, to $802.0 billion in Los Angeles County, CA.
      --San Mateo County, CA, had the largest increase, at 7.7 percent. The information industry was the leading contributor to the county's growth.

      1. Yikes

        I have a feeling MrPug forgot to include the /s.

        Yea, I have just about had enough of the MAGA clown car bleating on about how bad Los Angeles County is, we should just take our toys, basicially our $802,000,000,000, and leave. FFS, that's a top 20 in the world GDP for just Los Angeles County.

    2. memyselfandi

      It's a county not a town. Pretty sure there are no towns of any form in that county. Texas really should do something about it's county situation, being home to the least populous county in the nation, at one point recently a grand total of 21 people, 10 of whom were children. the adults each had a 9% chance to be sheriff and a 9% chance to be county judge. Can you imagine the taxes necessary for the other 8 to support those two.

  2. jeffreycmcmahon

    Pretty sure Nebraska through Texas counts as either the West Midwest, or not the Midwest at all. The "Central Midwest" would have to include Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois.

    1. emjayay

      Yes, that confused me a bit too. The Plains States are not the Prarie States. Chicago is in the Midwest. Oklahoma City is not, even if the geographic center of the 48 states is in the middle of Kansas, almost straight north of OKC.

      Of course these terms go back to when the actual states were the original colonies and the rest of the continent was past the fronteir to the west, and then the states part of the country expanded more or less one state at a time westward.

  3. Joseph Harbin

    New wind farm opened 2022. Green energy wins the day!

    Throckmorton community benefits from wind farm
    https://www.newschannel6now.com/2022/07/27/throckmorton-community-benefits-wind-farm/

    If you look at the Fred chart for personal income, you'll see that skyrocketed in 2021. I presume that's when the wind farm was being built. Personal income dropped quickly thereafter, and is now about where it was a decade ago.
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PI48447

    ETA:
    This jibes with the note for Throckmorton Co. at Kevin's link: "The utilities industry was the leading contributor to the county’s growth."

    1. Anonymous At Work

      Looks like they were on an upswing in 2009 through 2015 and crashed (or personal income per capita dropped for some other reason), I'm betting setting up a smaller wind farm or pipeline crews. In 2021-2022, the "skyrocket" is because the engineers responsible for building the actual wind farm arrived and then left after the job was through.
      Also, bad county to draw conclusions from because it is so small in terms of population that a CEO using a mailbox there would skew the numbers badly.

  4. rick_jones

    Silicon Valley did well, with all of its component parts in the top ten (Santa Clara, San Mateo, and San Francisco counties

    There may be “tech” in San Francisco county, but it is not Silicon Valley…

  5. JohnH

    If it's GDP was as low as Kevin suggests, surely percent change isn't terribly revealing and certainly does not, as he claims, mean it has done things right we all need to learn. Maybe a single person worked for once.

  6. Jasper_in_Boston

    How does a county like this double its GDP in a single year? Did they discover oil?

    A single new plant could easily double the GDP of a small enough county.

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