Western Australia has slumped to seventh spot in the latest CommSec State of the States report on state economies, thanks to poor unemployment figures and the mining downturn.

Two years ago WA topped the rankings, while the previous report, released three months ago, ranked WA in sixth position.

The report takes into account a number of factors including economic growth, retail spending, equipment investment; unemployment, construction, population growth and housing commencement.

New South Wales is the top-ranked economy, followed by the ACT and Victoria. Fellow mining state Queensland fell to sixth position.

Only Tasmania is ranked lower than WA, but the report notes "there is now little separating these three bottom ranked economies".

CommSec's chief economist Craig James said the report showed the transition evident in the Australian economy from mining to services, including retail, construction and infrastructure.

"Investment activity in the resource rich areas like Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory is well down from the highs of the mining boom," he said.

"In two years Western Australia has gone from first to seventh in the performance rankings. Slower population growth and continuing high unemployment will continue to hinder activity in the state's housing market."

WA 'doing exceedingly well': Treasurer

But Treasurer Mike Nahan said it was inevitable the state had declined relative to its position during the mining boom.

"Western Australia's gone through the biggest boom in our state's and our nation's history. It's not surprising that our economy has slowed since that boom," he said.

He said states such as South Australia and Tasmania "improved largely at the behest of ourselves through the GST transfer".

"This survey and its ranking provides us no information at all and some people will try to spin it as a negative and talk down the economy," Dr Nahan said.

"On many other areas of growth Western Australia's doing exceedingly well. Not as well as it did over the last 10 years but relative to the other states, exceedingly well."

But Opposition Leader Mark McGowan said the report was a sign of the failure of the Colin Barnett-led Government to properly manage the economy.

"Unfortunately Mr Barnett and the Liberal Party have let the state down, they don't have a plan for jobs, they have let us slip to seventh and they got their head in the sand about the economic circumstances facing West Australians and West Australian businesses," Mr McGowan said.

"Mr Nahan and Mr Barnett don't seem to understand a lot of people are doing it tough and a lot of people can't get work."