Agriculture was the backbone of West Virginia's economy until the 1890s, when extractive industries (including coal, oil, natural gas, and timber) began to play a major role. World War I stimulated important secondary industries, such as chemicals, steel, glass, and textiles. The beauty of West Virginia's mountains and forests attracted an increasing number of tourists in the 1990s, but the state's rugged topography and relative isolation from major markets continued to hamper its economic development. West Virginia did not participate substantially in the high-tech boom of the 1990s, as the long-term decline of its critical coal mining sector continued. From 1997 to 2000, output from the general services and retail trade sectors grew 19% and 13.6%, respectively, while coal mining declined 17.6%, trends that meant the loss of coal mining jobs paying more than $53,000 a year and the increase in service jobs paying $14,000 to $24,000. Output from the manufacturing sector fell at the same rate as mining output (17.6%) 1997 to 2000, although from an high base($6.5 billion in 1997 vs. $2.4 billion from coal mining). Overall growth was sluggish in the late 1990s, reaching 3.8% in 1999 (up from 1.9% in 1998) but falling to 0.1% in 2000. In 2001, growth actually improved to 3.5%, including a 13.8% jump in output from coal mining. However, by 2002, the national economic slowdown had begun to impact West Virginia employment, and by October 2002, there had been year-on-year losses in jobs in every state economic sector except services and government (a sector that grew 24.5% 1997 to 2001). The overall decline in employment was 0.7%, ahead of the national average of 0.4%.
In 2001, West Virginia's gross state product gross state product was $42.4 billion, the 40th largest among the states, to which general services contributed $8.3 billion; government, $7.1 billion; trade, $14.9 billion; manufacturing, $5.2 billion; financial services, $5 billion; transportation and public utilities, $4.6 billion, and construction, $2.1 billion. The public sector in 2001 constituted 16.8% of gross state product, well above the 12% average for the states.