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

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...

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, dairy products and corn.

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 UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 ma ...

Delaware Technical & Community College Delaware Technical Community College (previously Delaware Technical & Community College, also known as DTCC, Delaware Tech, or Del Tech) is a public community college in the U.S. state of Delaware. Delaware Tech is an open admission institution ...

) * banking (

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

M&T Bank M&T Bank Corporation (Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company) is an American bank holding company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. It operates 1680 branches in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts ...

JPMorgan Chase JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. As of 2022, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, the ...

, Citigroup,

Deutsche Bank Deutsche Bank AG (), sometimes referred to simply as Deutsche, is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and dual-listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and the New York Sto ...

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

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

, Syngenta,

Agilent Technologies Agilent Technologies, Inc. is an American life sciences company that provides instruments, software, services, and consumables for the entire laboratory workflow. Its global headquarters is located in Santa Clara, California. Agilent was establi ...

) * healthcare ( ChristianaCare,

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 and Bayhealth Hospital ...

, Nemours Children's Hospital, Delaware) * farming, specifically chicken farming in Sussex County (

Perdue Farms Perdue Farms is the parent company of Perdue Foods and Perdue AgriBusiness, based in Salisbury, Maryland. Perdue Foods is a major chicken, turkey, and pork processing company in the United States. Perdue AgriBusiness ranks among the top United ...

, Mountaire Farms,

Allen Family Foods Allen Family Foods was a large American producer and exporter of chicken, headquartered in Seaford, Delaware. Founded in 1919 by Charles C. Allen and Nellie G. Allen as a small local hatchery. At one time Allen Family Foods was the world's 18th-l ...

) * 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 from the United States, headquarter ...

Walgreens Walgreen Company, d/b/a Walgreens, is an American company that operates the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the United States behind CVS Health. It specializes in filling prescriptions, health and wellness products, health information, a ...

Acme Markets Acme Markets Inc. is a supermarket chain operating 161 stores throughout Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, the Hudson Valley of New York, and Pennsylvania and, as of 1999, is a subsidiary of Albertsons, and part of its presence in t ...

)

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

, located next to the state capital of Dover, 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 A morgue or mortuary (in a hospital or elsewhere) is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have cu ...

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

Wilmington Assembly Wilmington Assembly was a General Motors automobile factory in Wilmington, Delaware. The factory opened in 1947, and produced cars for GM's Chevrolet, Pontiac, Saturn, Opel, Buick and Daewoo brands during its operation. GM closed the plant on Jul ...

and Chrysler

Newark Assembly Newark Assembly was a Chrysler (DaimlerChrysler from 1998-2008) factory in Newark, Delaware built in 1951 to make tanks and later automobiles with production continuing until December 2008. A variety of Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth models were ...

), 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 EVRAZ plc (russian: Евраз) is a UK-incorporated multinational steel manufacturing and mining company part-owned by Russian oligarchs. It has operations mainly in Russia as well as the USA, Canada, and Kazakhstan. As of 2015, the ultimate b ...

), 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 DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

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 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 of regional or main company headquarters, mostly du ...

is largely because of its business-friendly corporation law.

Franchise tax A franchise tax is a government levy (tax) charged by some US states to certain business organizations such as corporations and partnerships with a nexus in the state. A franchise tax is not based on income. Rather, the typical franchise tax ca ...

es 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 The Tax Justice Network (or TJN) is an advocacy group consisting of a coalition of researchers and activists with a shared concern about tax avoidance, tax competition, and tax havens. Empirical results The TJN has reported on the OECD Base ...

'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 laws and banned the sale of liquor on Sunday.

References

{{Economy of the United States by jurisdiction