Manufacturing Economy
Washington Lost Share. The Transportation Manufacturing Map Became Less Concentrated.
Across the same 50 states, other transportation equipment’s geographic HHI fell from 938.95 to 654.20 in 2019–2024; its top-three share fell 9.54 percentage points.
Editorial evidence cutoff: September 9, 2026. Published September 29, 2026. Observation periods are stated throughout; older figures are retrospective evidence.
Supplier maps can outlive the industrial conditions that created them. For September 2026 planning, a retrospective comparison of 2019 and 2024 offers a reason to recheck the map of other transportation equipment manufacturing. The figures here are the historical BEA records preserved by September 9, not a claim that factories moved this month.
Washington’s dominance in other transportation equipment manufacturing weakened in the 2019 to 2024 state GDP record. Between 2019 and 2024, its share of the same fifty-state industry total fell from 22.96% to 12.53%. The change was large enough to reshape the geography of the entire sector, but a closer examination shows more than a single state shrinking.
Across those fifty states, the industry’s concentration index fell from 938.95 to 654.20, and its top-three share declined 9.54 percentage points. Current-dollar value added outside Washington grew 35.28%. The result is a more evenly distributed map of value added. It is not, by itself, a map of factories moving from one state to another. The calculations use BEA’s state GDP data, with the population and sector definition held constant.
WASHINGTON LOST SHARE WHILE OTHER STATES ADDED DOLLARS
Washington’s other transportation equipment value added declined from $38.02 billion in 2019 to $24.72 billion in 2024. Florida moved in the opposite direction, from $5.80 billion to $13.62 billion. Connecticut rose from $12.62 billion to $18.66 billion, while California increased from $19.15 billion to $24.94 billion. These are changes in current-dollar value added, not inflation-adjusted production growth.
The resulting order is striking: California is narrowly ahead of Washington in the 2024 panel, with Connecticut next. But a ranking alone throws away the substance. Washington remained a major center despite its decline, while Florida’s gain was large relative to its smaller starting base. A useful account therefore needs the initial levels, final levels, dollar changes and shares together. Each column answers a different question about the redistribution.
THE INDUSTRY LABEL IS BROADER THAN AEROSPACE
The category matters. Other transportation equipment includes aerospace alongside railroad rolling stock, ships and boats, and other transportation equipment; it excludes motor vehicles. Washington’s legislative auditors explain that scope in their 2024 aerospace review. A gain in this BEA category cannot automatically be described as an aircraft-manufacturing gain.
That review also makes clear that Washington’s changing position has already received official scrutiny. This analysis does not discover an unreported subject or identify a new cause. Its contribution is a later matched state panel, a concentration calculation, and tests separating Washington’s effect from developments elsewhere. Any article that changed the label to “aerospace” for a sharper headline would promise more sector detail than the underlying calculation contains.
REMOVE WASHINGTON AND A SMALLER SHIFT REMAINS
The strongest challenge to the concentration finding is mechanical. When a sector’s largest state loses value added, a concentration index can fall even if nothing meaningful changes in the distribution among the other states. To test that possibility, the calculation removes Washington and renormalizes the remaining forty-nine states to their own total in both years.
Their concentration index still falls, from 694.02 to 649.90, although the decline is much smaller. This is a useful distinction. Washington accounts for much of the change in the full map, but the remaining distribution also became somewhat less concentrated. The outside-Washington total increased 35.28% in current dollars. Together, these tests support a story of both a retreat by the former leader and growth spread across other established centers, without assigning a causal connection between them.
THE RESULT DOES NOT REST ON A SINGLE FINAL YEAR
The fifty-state index had already fallen to 646.87 in 2023. It edged up to 654.20 in 2024, leaving the broader decline intact. The last year therefore did not create the pattern. It slightly reversed it. Showing that intermediate observation prevents an endpoint comparison from implying an uninterrupted march toward greater geographic dispersion.
Coverage was checked separately. All fifty states have positive observations in both 2019 and 2024. The District of Columbia is excluded consistently because its 2019 sector observation is missing in this archive. The fifty-state sums are $165.5956 billion and $197.3154 billion, close to but distinct from the Regional table’s U.S. totals. Missing DC coverage and published rounding should remain visible. A missing observation is never evidence that production was zero.
A CHANGING MAP IS NOT PROOF OF RELOCATION
Several different developments could produce this pattern. Existing facilities outside Washington could increase activity. Washington facilities could reduce it. Product prices or the mix of high-value work could shift. Changes within the broader category could favor one set of states without affecting the same products elsewhere. The current-dollar GDP table alone cannot distinguish these possibilities.
A relocation claim requires establishment-level or company evidence connecting an identifiable activity at an origin to an identifiable destination. A claim about aerospace specifically requires aerospace-specific data. Even documented individual relocations would not explain the entire aggregate change automatically. The dollar bridge tells investigators how much change needs explaining; it does not provide the explanation. Employment, establishment counts, deliveries and investment records should be compared using matching definitions and years before attributing the shift.
WHAT THE HISTORICAL SHIFT CHANGES FOR A SUPPLIER
For a supplier prospecting for customers, the state comparison offers a better starting list than an old assumption that one location dominates the entire market. Florida and Connecticut deserve attention because their value-added gains are visible in the data, not because a headline declares them the next center of aerospace. The next task is to identify the actual product categories, buyers, certifications and purchasing requirements behind those gains.
The September relevance is a question of coverage. A supplier relying on an older geographic prospect list can use this historical distribution to identify places that merit fresh customer research. The change in value-added shares cannot establish whether its own products gained buyers there, or whether the 2024 pattern continued through 2026.
Geographic diversity also needs a second layer of scrutiny. Activity spread across several states can still depend on the same major customers, production programs or input suppliers. A lower state concentration index does not establish a more resilient supply chain. The defensible finding is specific: the value-added map of other transportation manufacturing became less dominated by its leading states, and that conclusion survives both an earlier endpoint and the removal of Washington itself.
Sources and evidence
Evidence period: 2019–2024 annual; historical 1997/2007 and 2023 sensitivity. The frozen evidence record lists the source files and verified hashes available September 9, 2026. Source revision: 5e4fb7726c3d40060c0151c086c903baae856cab. Later live-data updates do not alter the historical evidence in this article.
leg.wa.gov/jlarc/taxReports/2024/aerospace/p_1/default.html
Published 2026-09-29.