Top 5 fastest-growing states

1. North Dakota – up 7.1 percent

Andy Nelson / Staff / File
Combines harvest a field of wheat for Johnson Farms near Neche, N.D., near the Canadian border in this September 2006 file photo. The state saw the nation's most impressive GDP growth in 2010, with a gain of 7.1 percent.

The state with the lowest unemployment rate and a burgeoning population saw the sharpest increase in its GDP. The industry that pushed it to the top? Mining. While mining didn’t help the US much as a whole, it boosted North Dakota’s $31 billion GDP by almost two percentage points. Other big players in the state were real estate and wholesale trade.

By the way, the states whose GDPs shrunk last year? Wyoming and Nevada, but each only lost less than one percentage point.

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