Defense Spending by State - Fiscal Year 2016

Readers should take caution if comparing findings from this report to previous OEA Defense Spending by State reports. Unlike the reports covering previous fiscal years, no "manual adjustments" were made to reallocate Defense contract spending across states based on information outside of USASpending.gov. Rather, the analysis is based exclusively on the prime and subaward information available in USASpending.gov. OEA's FY 2015 report included manual adjustments to contract spending in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Differences in contract spending in these states between the FY 2015 and FY 2016 reports may be due to this change in methodology, rather than fluctuations in actual DoD spending. For example, in USASpending.gov, DoD prime contracts awarded to General Dynamics Electric Boat are reported primarily in the State of Connecticut. The FY 2015 report used information from the company to reflect its operations in Rhode Island. This data was not available at the time of printing the FY 2016 report, so the company does not appear in Rhode Island’s list of Top Defense Contractors as it had in FY 2015, and the amount spent by the company in the State is not reflected in the Total Contract Spending for Rhode Island. Nevertheless, submarine production continues at the company’s Quonset Point facility.

This report also uses different personnel counts than the reports covering previous fiscal years. Personnel totals reflect all active duty, civilian, National Guard, and Reserve personnel that had an assigned or duty location in a particular state or the District of Columbia over the course of the fiscal year. While generally higher than a point-in-time snapshot of personnel levels (e.g. as of September 30, 2016), the cumulative totals allow the reader to see how many people earned the gross pay reported for a state or locality. More details on the methodology and sources of data can be found in appendix 2.