With a big part of the nation looking for employment, relocating is almost inevitable. It’s no wonder that homebuyers are looking at how the area is affected by the economy as well as the employment rate.

The U.S. economy grew in 2011 for the second year in a row. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the nation’s growth domestic product (GDP) increased 1.5% – less than half the growth in the pervious year. This still shows that the economy is moving in the right direction.

According to 24/7 Wall St., “The biggest contributors the nation’s economic growth were professional, scientific, and technical services and the information sector, which represented 24.7% and 14.7% of total U.S. GDP growth, respectively. By far, the most significant growth industry was durable goods manufacturing, which contributed to nearly a third of total GDP growth.”

In 2011, the real GDP of 11 states grew by at least a 2%. In most of these 11 states, sector growth was similar to the nation as a whole, with the driving forces behind their growth coming from manufacturing.

The majority of the states on this list have experienced rising home prices as well as employment growth recently. In addition to the federal GDP data, 24/7 Wall St. culled employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and population figures from the Census Bureau to create a snapshot of the 11 states with the fastest-growing economies in 2011.