This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In 2012, Salt Lake City's economy was slightly smaller than Cuba's and slightly larger than Azerbaijan's.
Salt Lake City metro area's gross metropolitan product (GMP) in 2012 was $74.8 billion, according to a study for The United States Conference of Mayors and other organizations. Meanwhile Cuba's entire GDP was $76.3 billion and Azerbaijan's was $68.7 billion.
Domestically, Salt Lake City's 2012 GMP came in just behind the New Orleans metro area, at $80.2 billion, and just ahead of Richmond, Va., at $70 billion. Salt Lake City's economy is also just slightly larger than Hawaii's and just slightly smaller than New Mexico's.
By comparison, the New York City metro area by far has the largest GMP of any city in the U.S. at $1.34 trillion. That's just behind the GDP of Australia, at $1.5 trillion, and just ahead of Spain, at $1.32 trillion.
Elsewhere in Utah, the Ogden metro area's $19.9 billion GMP was slightly smaller than the GDP of Trinidad and Tobago and just a bit larger than the GDP of Honduras. The Provo metro area had the smallest of the Wasatch Front's municipal economies at $17 billion. That's smaller than the economy of Brunei Darussalam and larger than the economy of the nation of Georgia.
The data also offers some good news about economic gains in Utah: all of the state's metro economies are growing. In 2014, Salt Lake City's GMP is projected to reach $81.5 billion.
Jim Dalrymple II
Twitter: @jimmycdii