Behind the numbers: state revenues have grown for the third straight year, but don't go celebrating yet.

• Author: Haggerty, Todd
• Position: STATE REVENUE

State tax collections continue to climb. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, total state tax collections added up to $846 billion in FY 2013. That's 6.1 percent more than FY 2012 levels and the third year in a row cumulative state tax collections have grown.

The uptick in tax collections was led by the performance of the personal income tax, which rose 10.3 percent over the previous year. Sales and use tax collections grew by 3.9 percent, a continuation of the modest growth they experienced in FY 2012 when collections rose 3.2 percent.

The corporate income tax was up 7.9 percent in FY 2013, a significant jump from a growth rate of 1.6 percent in FY 2012.

While the continued improvement in state tax collections is an achievement, don't put on your party hat just yet. It's been a steady, but slow, climb out of the economic nadir caused by the Great Recession. State revenues are up, but not impressively so. Five years after the longest economic downturn since the Great Depression, 2013 state tax collections are up from 2008 by only 8.5 percent. In comparison, five years after the recession in FY 2002, state tax collection had grown by 42 percent. This spread illustrates just how different the current economic recovery has been from its predecessors.

The change in tax collections from 2008 to 2013 has varied greatly among states--from an increase of 129 percent in North Dakota to a decline of 41.2 percent in Alaska. Energy powered the changes in both--a frenzy of oil development in the Peace Garden State and a drop in oil production in the Last Frontier.

Total tax collections in 42 states met or exceeded 2008 amounts in 2013. Growth rates in 22 of these states outpaced the U.S average of 8.5 percent. This is certainly good news, but it is tempered by the fact that growth rates in 2013 collections for 20 other states were less than the U.S. average. And...