The two industries which increased their shares of GSP the most during the last 15 years were services and government. Indeed, services and mining have roughly traded places, with services accounting for 15.8 percent of GSP in 1994, compared to 9.7 percent in 1979. West Virginia's industry mix is now less reliant on the volatile mining and manufacturing industries and instead depends more on the services and government sectors, which tend to be more stable. This makes the state's industrial structure more like the national structure, and implies that the state economy is likely to experience future business cycles which are more like the national business cycle than it has in the past. However, that is not to say that coal mining is not an important part of the state economy.
Coal mining is still a much more important part of the West Virginia economy than nationally.
West Virginia is still more sensitive to developments in the coal industry than any other state in the nation. 1 Estimates of GSP begin in 1977 and the most recent year for which data is available is 1994. Inflation-adjusted GSP estimates begin in 1982 and end in 1994. GSP estimates for 1995 are expected to be released this summer. In this article, what we will call Gross Sales is actually Gross Sales plus the change in the value of finished inventories plus the value of intra-corporate shipments of goods and services.