California zipped past the United Kingdom to become the 5th largest economy in the world in 2017.

The U.S. Commerce Department reported that California with a population of 39.54 million has a larger Gross State Product at $2.75 trillion, versus the United Kingdom with a population of 65.64 million and a Gross Domestic Product of $2.62 trillion.

A big advantage California enjoys is having a surface area of 163,696 square miles, compared to the UK with just 93,628 square miles of area. Although almost a third of California is uninhabited, about the same one-third of the UK is uninhabited.

Setting a new all-time highest ranking versus the world is a huge change from 2012 when huge swaths of California real estate was getting foreclosed and thousands of cars were getting repossessed. This knocked the not-so-golden state to a world economic ranking of #10.

But California’s Gross State Product jump by $700 billion and created 2 million jobs in the last six years. A huge piece of that recovery has been due to globalism, with the U.S. Commerce Department reporting that California exported $171.9 billion to 229 foreign economies in 2017.

Outstanding performing export sectors were Silicon Valley which passed $30 billion, Hollywood entertainment hitting about $16 billion, and the state’s agricultural sector recording a near-record $20 billion in exports.

The chief economist at the California Department of Finance Irena Asmundson told the Associated Press that California’s economy since the lows in 2012 hit new highs in 2017 that included $26 billion for financial services and real estate; $20 billion for the information sector; and a decade-high $10 billion in manufacturing.

Asmundson added that during the five-year period, California with 12 percent of the U.S. population created 16 percent of all new domestic jobs and the state’s share of U.S. Gross Domestic Product grew from 12.8 percent to 14.2 percent.

California’s unemployment rate was at a 17-year low of 4.8 percent in 2017 and has steadily declined to 4.3 percent at the end of March to set a 38-year low, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

But not everything is great for all Californians, with Breitbart News reporting that Silicon Valley has the highest income inequality in the nation and the U.S. News & World Report naming California as the worst state for “quality of life,” due to the high cost of living.

If California was a nation, the only countries left to pass would be Germany with a GDP of $3.69 trillion, Japan with a GDP of $4.87 trillion and China with a GDP of $12.02 trillion. Then the Golden State could try to pass United States that has a GDP of $16.64 trillion, without California.