In the U.S., Texas is only one of 50 states. But it’s so large it has similar characteristics to an entire sovereign nation. Texas has the second highest population and second highest GDP behind California, and the second largest area behind Alaska.
Fact 1 of 5: Gross Domestic Product
The annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Texas, i.e., the monetary value of goods and services produced in the state annually, is about US$3 trillion (€2.5 trillion). That accounts for almost 10% of the GDP of the United States. The most mind-blowing fact is that Texas alone has a higher GDP than 188 of the world’s 195 UN-recognized countries!
The Texas GDP is …
- 10% the United States’ GDP
- 15% of China’s GDP
- 59% of Germany’s GDP
- 69% of Japan’s GDP
- 70% of India’s GDP (despite only having 2% of India’s population)
- 75% of the United Kingdom’s GDP
- 88% of France’s GDP
Texas also has 1.2 times the GDP of Italy and Canada, and 1.3 times the GDP of Brazil and Russia. The state has 12.2 million cattle, 14% of all the cattle in the United States. That’s more than double second-place Nebraska. Texas produces 43% of America’s oil and up to 40% of America’s cotton. In the best years, 8% of the entire world’s cotton supply comes from Texas. The cotton fields cover six million acres in Texas alone, 80% of the total land area of Belgium!
Fact 2 of 5: Distance
Here is the most amazing Texas fact in my opinion. It would take nearly 14 hours to drive from the top of Texas to the bottom on the shortest path. That’s mind blowing considering 99% of that journey is on high-speed freeways, and that the United States has an incredibly intricate web of roadways. That 915-mile (1,472 km) drive is nearly as long as the route from Switzerland to Africa.
The straight-line distance between the two farthest points in Texas is 809 miles (1,302 km). The southern end of that lies on the shore of the Rio Grande in a nature conservatory looking into Mexico at GPS coordinates 25.839814, -97.373223.
The northern end lies in the northwest corner of the Texas Panhandle on the border with New Mexico at coordinates 36.500481, -103.041487.
That straight-line distance is about the same as a line from the northern tip of Africa to Vienna, Austria!
Fact 3 of 5: Area
Texas contains 268,596 square miles of area (695,662 square km) covering about 9% of the 48 contiguous states (which excludes Alaska and Hawaii). That’s larger than all but 38 of the world’s countries, making Texas 1.1 times the size of France and nearly double the size of Japan!
Fact 4 of 5: Population
Texas has a 2026 population of 32,198,071, more than 149 of the 195 official countries and nearly the population of Malaysia. As the fourth fastest growing state (behind Idaho, Florida, and South Carolina), Texas gains 1,338 people per day. That’s equivalent to adding the entire population of Iceland every 10 months!
Dallas and Houston are the fourth and fifth most populated metropolitan areas in the United States. These are the largest population centers outside of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Despite their enormous population, both have shockingly grown by 11% over the past five years!
Fact 5 of 5: Loving County
My favorite random fact about Texas is that it contains Loving County. Each state except Alaska is broken up into administrative districts called counties (or parishes in Louisiana and councils of government in Connecticut). Having visited all 3,072 of those counties, I find Loving County very intriguing.
This is the least populated of the U.S. counties. Based on the 2020 U.S. Census, the average population of a U.S. county is 106,314. The population of Loving County is only 52 people living in 680 square miles (1,750 square km), an area three times the size of Toronto. The population has dropped since the 2020 census when the number of residents was 64.