Why Texas is labeled Canada on this map of the ‘ridiculously large’ U.S. economy

Much has been made of the size of California’s massive economy, but it’s hard to truly wrap one’s brain around its place on the global stage.

That’s where Mark Perry comes in. The University of Michigan economics and finance professor put it in perspective with one eye-popping statistic, in particular: California’s gross domestic product of $2.75 trillion in 2017 basically matches that of the U.K., and it achieves this with 19.3 million workers, vs. Great Britain’s 33.8 million.

“Amazingly, it required a labor force 75% larger (and 14.5 million more people) in the U.K. to produce the same economic output last year as California!” Perry wrote. “That’s a testament to the superior, world-class productivity of the American worker.”

But California isn’t the only state that towers over much of the world as an economic engine. Perry illustrated the overall dominance by matching the GDP for each state in 2017 to a foreign country with a comparable nominal GDP:

Other notable examples Perry highlighted include Texas, which produced nearly $1.7 trillion to match Canada. The Lone Star State accomplished this with 50% fewer workers, as another example of America’s “word-class” productivity.

Overall, Perry points out, the U.S. produced 24.3% of world GDP in 2017, with only about 4.3% of the world’s population. California, Texas and New York — if they were their own countries — would have ranked in the world’s top 11 largest economies.

“Let’s not lose sight of how ridiculously large and powerful the U.S. economy is, and how much wealth, output and prosperity is being created every day in the largest economic engine there has ever been in human history,” Perry concluded.

Here’s a full breakdown of the numbers: