Arkansas - Economy

Economy

See also: Economy of Arkansas and List of Arkansas companies

Once a state with a cashless society in the uplands and plantation agriculture in the lowlands, Arkansas's economy has evolved and diversified to meet the needs of today's consumer. The state's gross domestic product (GDP) was $105 billion in 2010. Four Fortune 500 companies are based in Arkansas, including the world's #1 retailer, Walmart. The per capita personal income in 2010 was $36,027, ranking forty-fifth in the nation. The three-year median household income from 2009-11 was $39,806, ranking forty-ninth in the nation. The state's agriculture outputs are poultry and eggs, soybeans, sorghum, cattle, cotton, rice, hogs, and milk. Its industrial outputs are food processing, electric equipment, fabricated metal products, machinery, and paper products. Mines in Arkansas produce natural gas, oil, crushed stone, bromine, and vanadium.

As of July 2012 the state's unemployment rate is 7.3%

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Famous quotes containing the word economy:

    I favor the policy of economy, not because I wish to save money, but because I wish to save people. The men and women of this country who toil are the ones who bear the cost of the Government. Every dollar that we carelessly waste means that their life will be so much the more meager. Every dollar that we prudently save means that their life will be so much the more abundant. Economy is idealism in its most practical terms.
    Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    The basis of political economy is non-interference. The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply. Do not legislate. Meddle, and you snap the sinews with your sumptuary laws.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)