The Heartland?: The State of the Heartland: Factbook 2018

As defined here in a report, the Factbook  was developed through a partnership of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and the Walton Family Foundation and was prepared to support the Walton Family Foundation’s inaugural “Heartland Summit.” Their version of "The Heartland"  consists of 19 mostly inland states sprawled across nearly 1.1 million square miles—roughly one-third of the U.S. landmass. 
Here's a link to the interactive site > http://factbook.theheartlandsummit.org/
The factbook adopts a modern, state-based definition of the Heartland (developed by the Walton Family Foundation) that begins with the classic Midwest and includes parts of the South, but excludes both the original 13 American colonies and the Intermountain West.
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Map the region

Visualize how Heartland states and metropolitan, micropolitan, and rural areas compare with one another across an array of indicators.

JobsJobs at young firmsGDPAverage wageProductivityStandard of livingPoverty rateMedian earningsEmployment rateShare of jobs in advanced industriesExport share of outputPopulationYoung adult populationBA attainment shareR&D spending share of gross productNumber of top 100 universities for tech transferHome valuesShare of population without high-speed broadband access

Most recent yearChange over time

StatesMetropolitan areasMicropolitan areasRural portion of states

Selected place

States

Heartland avg.

Non-Heartland avg.

Jobs 2017 (thousands)

5,365 to 5,932

4,296

2,782 to 3,018

1,540 to 1,937

414 to 1,371

In total, the Heartland economy is bigger than Germany’s and just a bit smaller than Japan’s.
Focused on how the defined region’s economy has been performing since the recent financial crisis, the factbook provides both encouraging and trying news for the region. 
The good news is that the region is doing better than is sometimes portrayed, particularly on measures of tradable industry presence. With that said, the Heartland is variable in its prosperity and serious deficits in human capital and innovation capacity pose challenges to future prosperity in many areas.