This article is intended to give an overview of the economy of

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...

Affluence

According to a 2013 study by Phoenix Marketing International, Delaware had the ninth-largest number of millionaires per capita in the United States, with a ratio of 6.20 percent.

Agriculture

Delaware's agricultural output consists of poultry, nursery stock,

soybeans The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean. Soy is a staple crop, the world's most grown legume, and an important animal feed. Soy is a key source of f ...

, dairy products and

corn Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout Poaceae, grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples of Mexico, indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago ...

Energy

Solar power

Wind power

Industries

, the state's unemployment rate was 5.1%. The state's largest employers are: * government (State of Delaware, New Castle County) * education (

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially known as UD, UDel, or Delaware) is a Statutory college#Delaware, privately governed, state-assisted Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Newark, Delaware, United States. UD offers f ...

, Delaware Technical & Community College) * banking (

Bank of America The Bank of America Corporation (Bank of America) (often abbreviated BofA or BoA) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered at the Bank of America Corporate Center in ...

, M&T Bank,

JPMorgan Chase JPMorgan Chase & Co. (stylized as JPMorganChase) is an American multinational financial services, finance corporation headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. It is List of largest banks in the United States, the largest ba ...

Citigroup Citigroup Inc. or Citi (Style (visual arts), stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services company based in New York City. The company was formed in 1998 by the merger of Citicorp, t ...

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (, ) is a Germany, German multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. ...

) * chemical, pharmaceutical, technology ( DuPont de Nemours Inc.,

AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () (AZ) is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, UK. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...

Syngenta Syngenta Global AG is a global agricultural technology company headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. It primarily covers crop protection and seeds for farmers. Syngenta is part of the Syngenta Group, entirely owned by Sinochem, a Chinese state ...

Agilent Technologies Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American global company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for laboratories. Agilent was established in 1999 as a spin-off from Hewlett-Packar ...

) * healthcare (

ChristianaCare ChristianaCare is a network of private, non-profit hospitals providing health care services to all of the U.S. state of Delaware and portions of seven counties bordering the state in Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey. The system includes two ...

Bayhealth Medical Center Bayhealth Medical Center is a healthcare system serving the central and southern portion of Delaware in the United States. Locations Bayhealth Medical Center operates two hospitals: Bayhealth Hospital, Kent Campus in Dover, Delaware, Dover and Ba ...

, Nemours Children's Hospital, Delaware) * farming, specifically chicken farming in Sussex County ( Perdue Farms, Mountaire Farms, Allen Family Foods) * retail (

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

, Walgreens, Acme Markets)

Dover Air Force Base Dover Air Force Base or Dover AFB is a United States Air Force (USAF) base under the operational control of Air Mobility Command (AMC), located southeast of the city of Dover, Delaware. The 436th Airlift Wing is the host wing, and runs the bu ...

, located next to the state capital of

Dover Dover ( ) is a town and major ferry port in Kent, southeast England. It faces France across the Strait of Dover, the narrowest part of the English Channel at from Cap Gris Nez in France. It lies southeast of Canterbury and east of Maidstone. ...

, is one of the largest Air Force bases in the country and is a major employer in Delaware. In addition to its other responsibilities in the United States Air Force Air Mobility Command, this air base serves as the entry point and mortuary for American military personnel and some U.S. government civilians who die overseas.

Industrial decline

Since the mid-2000s, Delaware has seen the departure of the state's automotive manufacturing industry (

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

Wilmington Assembly and

Chrysler FCA US, LLC, Trade name, doing business as Stellantis North America and known historically as Chrysler ( ), is one of the "Big Three (automobile manufacturers), Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn H ...

Newark Assembly), the corporate buyout of a major bank holding company (

MBNA MBNA Corporation was a bank holding company and parent company of wholly owned subsidiary MBNA America Bank, N.A., headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, prior to being acquired by Bank of America in 2006. History The former Maryland National ...

), the departure of the state's steel industry ( Evraz Claymont Steel), the bankruptcy of a fiber mill (National Vulcanized Fibre), and the diminishing presence of

in Wilmington. In late 2015, DuPont announced that 1,700 employees, nearly a third of its footprint in Delaware, would be laid off in early 2016. The merger of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. and Dow Chemical Company into DowDuPont took place on September 1, 2017.

Incorporation in Delaware

More than 50% of all U.S. publicly traded companies and 63% of the

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune (magazine), Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States Joint-stock company#Closely held corporations and publicly traded corporations, corporations by ...

are incorporated in Delaware. The state's attractiveness as a

corporate haven Corporate haven, corporate tax haven, or multinational tax haven is used to describe a jurisdiction that multinational corporations find attractive for establishing subsidiaries or Incorporation (business), incorporation of regional or main company ...

is largely because of its business-friendly corporation law. Franchise taxes on Delaware corporations supply about one-fifth of its state revenue. Although "USA (Delaware)" ranked as the world's most opaque jurisdiction on the Tax Justice Network's 2009 Financial Secrecy Index, the same group's 2011 Index ranks the USA fifth and does not specify Delaware. In Delaware, there are more than a million registered corporations, meaning there are more corporations than people.

Food and drink

Title 4, chapter 7 of the Delaware Code stipulates that alcoholic liquor only be sold in specifically licensed establishments, and only between 9:00 am and 1:00 am. Until 2003, Delaware was among the several states enforcing

blue law Blue laws (also known as Sunday laws, Sunday trade laws, and Sunday closing laws) are laws restricting or banning certain activities on specified days, usually Sundays in the western world. The laws were adopted originally for Religion, religio ...

s and banned the sale of liquor on Sunday.

References

{{Economy of the United States by jurisdiction