The Inland West Eclipses the Southeast as an Economic Powerhouse

For decades, the Inland West has remained invisible to institutional capital, obscured by state lines that tether inland hubs like Fresno or Spokane to coastal metros like San Francisco and Seattle. A study by Graceada Partners, titled Equal Footing, challenges this fragmentation by aggregating 21 years of federal data to analyze the region as a single entity. The result is a portrait of a massive, cohesive market that has quietly become a dominant force in the U.S. economy.

The most significant shift occurred in per-capita income. In 2003, the Southeast sat closer to the national average at 92.6 percent, while the Inland West trailed at 88.8 percent. By 2024, the Inland West had climbed toward the national average while the Southeast drifted downward, marking a clear crossover. This momentum extends to the labor market, where the region added roughly 5.4 million jobs over the same period, outpacing the Southeast by a million positions despite having a smaller total population.

Ryan Swehla, president and co-founder of Graceada Partners, argues that this regional powerhouse has been overlooked not due to weak fundamentals, but because of a lack of holistic measurement. With growth rates in real output and employment consistently beating the Southeast in recent years, the data suggests that the Inland West is no longer a collection of secondary markets, but a primary engine of American growth.