Signs of economic growth are easy to find around the Charleston region, and now the federal government has released a report that confirms that the local economy isn't just growing - it's booming.

The three-county area's economic output has grown faster in the past five years than South Carolina's and the nation's as a whole, with the latest year's increase ranking among the top 20 percent of metro areas nationwide, according to a first-of-its-kind report on metro area gross domestic product.

The value of Charleston's total output of goods and services in 2005, the latest year for which data is available, was $20 billion, making the Lowcountry the 81st largest local economy among 363 ranked in the report by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That's up five spots compared to 2001. Looking only at metro areas with economies the size of Charleston's or larger, the local area's growth rate ranked 22nd in the nation.

Among South Carolina metro areas, Charleston's 16.8 percent inflation-adjusted growth over that period was behind only Myrtle Beach's 20.1 percent increase. And in the latest year, Charleston's 5.4 percent jump was tops in the state and exceeded by only 63 cities nationally. And while those numbers are impressive enough, they don't include some of the area's more recent high-profile corporate expansions, such as the Vought-Alenia aircraft manufacturing complex at Charleston International Airport, the ramping up of production and payrolls at armored vehicle maker Force Protection in Ladson, and the Google data center under construction near Goose Creek.

What they do reflect is the vitality of the area's highly diversified economy, said Frank Hefner, an economist at the College of Charleston. Although Charleston is well known as a tourist destination, Hefner noted that the biggest contributors to the economic growth were manufacturing, information and finance. "If you add up the contributions of all the different industries here, we really are the proof that in economic development, you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket," he said. "We're diversified across many different categories."

What that diversity does is help protect the region from a slowdown in any one business sector, Hefner said. "Having so many different kinds of growth areas, we're less susceptible to downturns," he said. "Even the housing market - we'll have a slowdown, but look at all the people moving into the area to fill all the jobs that are being created. That insulates us to some extent."

What a lack of diversification can mean to an area is illustrated by the Greenville region. Its 2 percent growth from 2001-2005 placed it in a tie with two other cities, including Detroit, at 335th in the nation. Like Detroit, Greenville's economy has been tied to manufacturing, and both areas have been hit hard with plant closings and job losses.

Nationally, the fastest-growing metro economy over the past five years was Palm Coast, Fla., which saw its economic output skyrocket 164 percent. Its total output in 2005 was, however, only about one-tenth the size of Charleston's. Among cities Charleston's size or larger, the fastest-growing was Las Vegas, which posted a 31.2 percent increase in output. At the opposite end of the scale, Lafayette, La., ranked lowest in growth, suffering a 10.7 percent decline in output since 2001.

For cities Charleston's size or larger, Wichita, Kan., saw its output fall 3.5 percent to place the area 358th on the list. New Orleans was close behind, posting a 3.2 percent decline; the Crescent City's economy shrank as much as Charleston's grew, 5.4 percent, in 2005, the year it was hit by Hurricane Katrina.