I have in recent months heard the claim that California has the fourth (sometimes third) largest economy in the world. Presumably one and two would be the rest of the USA and China. This would mean, however, that California would have a larger economy than several OECD nations with considerably larger populations. The UK, France and Italy all have about 1.5 times the population of the golden state; Germany is 2x and Japan is 3x larger. Am I right to be skeptical of this claim?
3rd is Germany and is significantly less than US & China.
From Here: https://www.investopedia.com/insights/worlds-top-economies/
From what I can find California does come in slightly ahead or slightly behind of Japan. They’re listed around $4.3 Trillion.
| Country | Nominal GDP (in trillions) | PPP Adjusted GDP (in trillions) | Annual Growth (%) | GDP Per Capita |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | $32.38 | $32.38 | 2.3 | $94,429 |
| China | $20.85 | $44.29 | 4.4 | $14,873 |
| Germany | $5.45 | $6.41 | 0.8 | $65,302 |
| Japan | $4.38 | $7.26 | 0.7 | $35,703 |
| United Kingdom | $4.24 | $4.72 | 0.8 | $61,056 |
| India | $4.15 | $18.90 | 6.5 | $2,812 |
| France | $3.59 | $4.73 | 0.9 | $52,083 |
| Italy | $2.74 | $3.87 | 0.5 | $46,505 |
| Russia | $2.65 | $7.52 | 1.1 | $18,525 |
| Brazil | $2.63 | $5.23 | 1.9 | $12,312 |
Say that the population of California is a rounded 40 million. That would make the GDP per capita $107,500, slightly more than the US average. Sounds right.
If you exclude the US itself, Texas & NY are top 10 with California having a slightly higher GDP than Japan for #3. So #4 overall.
| Rank | U.S. state or country | GDP (millions of U.S. dollars) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | China | 18,743,803 |
| 2 | Germany | 4,659,929 |
| 3 | California | 4,103,124 |
| 4 | Japan | 4,026,211 |
| 5 | India | 3,912,686 |
| 6 | United Kingdom | 3,643,834 |
| 7 | France | 3,162,079 |
| 8 | Texas | 2,709,393 |
| 9 | Italy | 2,372,775 |
| 10 | New York | 2,297,028 |
Copied from here: List of U.S. states and territories by GDP - Wikipedia
It’s a meaningless comparison, though, because if you include parts of the US on the list, why not parts of other countries? Or conglomerations of countries, for that matter: Where would the EU stack up?
The EU as a whole would rank second. If you added in the UK it would still rank second. If you limit it to countries using the Euro it would probably rank third.
Where does London figure in this table?
| Population | 9,089,736 (2024) |
|---|---|
| GDP | £617.915 billion (2023) |
| GDP per capita | £69,077 (2023) |
That is roughly 830,000 million USD so not on the list, but I thought London was suppose to be about half of the UK’s GDP, so I’m surprised the number was that low. I guess that factoid I learned was incorrect.
Only 22.3%, apparently.
I was checking to see how much of the UK’s GDP was down to the oil and gas industry but, surprisingly, it’s close to nil (although it spiked in the early '80s to above 3%). The UK is very much a service economy at present, and health (specifically the NHS) and education are a sizable chunk of that, plus the financial industry (although that’s down post-Brexit).
Whereas I’m guessing that California’s GDP is heavily based on the entertainment industry and agriculture.
And, of course, AI and tech.
Oh yeah, that too. 
Ag is pretty far down the list.
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That real estate/rental and lease are #2 on that list after information services is not a shocker to anyone who lives in CA 
. But it does point out an important fact - the state economy includes purely internal revenue. The CA real estate market is insanely pricey, but it has only a little to do with international markets. It’s substantially money churn inside the state.