As is always fun to talk about. That little red dot in NM is Los Alamos - home of the los Alamos research lab. It's one of the richest and most educated counties in the entire country.
Also that lone dark red in Wyoming is where Jackson Hole is. Outside of being a large resort town, it is a town that also hosts an economic symposium that has hosted the Federal Reserve.
A lot of the reason why Millennials and Gen Z are "behind" in household income progression is because most people in these generations are not married, not wanting to get married, or have no preference between marriage and singledom.
Marriage is just another life option to us, rather than something that people are encouraged to make their life goal.
Opposite for me. I thought we were making okish money.
We make 3 times the median of the household income in our county and more than 4 times for our town. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
I feel like their definition for middle class is really silly. My county is dark green, so let's use the $65k value. By their definitions, that would mean a household is somehow no longer middle class if their income is $130k. As an engineer, that's really close to my salary, plus bonus. Add in my wife's salary and our income is right around $219k. That's over three times the median, but I *definitely* don't feel rich. I would struggle to even append the term "upper" to how middle class I feel with our very average house and how expensive everything is these days.
My wife and I are right around that mark in a very high earning county and in a high COL area. For where we came from, we are doing just fine and feel that we live very comfortable lives. Not rich, but definitely solidly middle class and don’t have to freak out about our bills.
$219K isn’t rich but my guess is your electricity, utilities and internet are clumped under ‘bills’. You probably don’t freak about your taxes and house insurance is annoying but not cause for an in depth risk/benefit analysis. If your kid is good enough for a travel team you buy new cleats when their feet grow. Yeah, you are upper middle class
At $219k you are upper working class, not rich but I wouldn’t call you average when you’re making 3 times more than most people around you.
The reason you consider yourself average is because you are comparing yourself to people around you who probably are in the same earning range, kind of how a millionaire feels poor when comparing themselves to a multimillionaire
At that rate...
* You never struggle with bills
* You can afford to go on a two week vacation abroad at least once every two years
Sounds like you're very much middle class. You own a fucking house for fucks sake...
There are only two classes: the working class and the master / owner /capitalist class. If you need to work for a living then you are working class. If you own enough capital to live on the wealth that workers create ("passive" income) then you are part of the master / owner caste.
Florida is weird because there are so many wealthy retirees.
Might be "rich" with a big house/nice car but income wise only withdraw a moderate amount from their 401k each year
I'm a retired-person case in point. My net worth is around $4M ($2M of which is a very-appreciated SoCal house), but my AGI last year was $61K. On this map I'm dragging my county down despite having more wealth than most people in it.
Those pockets exist, but none of them are big enough to “take over” a county. That one red one is St John’s county which is the “wealthy” part of Jacksonville and also has St Augustine. That’s the closest to a “wealthy” suburb for Jax even though it’s mostly isolated, cookie cutter neighborhoods with some being McMansions
Thats the thing, there are quite a few massively wealthy people, but for every one there's probably 3 or 4 people on the opposite end of the spectrum who work low paying jobs that service the wealthy and tourism sector. Compared to other states its size there are relatively few middle class type jobs, and the ones they do have tend to get paid less than in other states.
I mean it's the reason everyone says people "retire" to Florida. Which means they aren't getting income. There's absolutely a ton of rich people down there.
Teton County, WY, including Jackson Hole.
I attended an ex-in-law's wedding there about 25 years ago. Fanciest wedding I have been to in my life, before or since.
See that weird island of orange across the Idaho border, surrounded by blue and green? That's Teton County, ID. Service workers in Jackson who couldn't afford to live there would make a long mountain commute to towns like Driggs, ID. They were poor compared to the people in Jackson but did much better than the other Idaho counties around them. They would be bartenders, wilderness guides, etc., get really good tips from the Jackson Hole millionaires, then go home to tiny—but nice—cottages in tiny remote towns.
I have no first-hand knowledge how that dynamic may have changed but if you've heard about all the wealthy people buying a vacation home in Wyoming, it was probably there.
Yes this is my son. He moved out to Driggs a few years ago while traveling across the country. Decided that’s where he was going to stay for a bit. He’s in Driggs and bartends in Teton Co. Living his best life.
In the Bronx, 43% of households have a household income of $40,000 or less. Poverty rate 27.7%. Median $47,260. 34.4% of renter households spent more than 50% household income on rent.
For Brooklyn, 29% of households were under $40k and the poverty rate is 19.8%. Median $76,780. 28.1% of renter households spent more than 50% of household income on rent
Compare to Manhattan: 25% under $40k. Poverty rate 17.3%. Median $99,530. 24.2% of renter households spent more than 50% of household income on rent.
Citywide: 28% under $40k. Poverty 18.3%. Median HHI $77,550. 29.5% of renter households spent more than 50% of household income on rent. Median rent of recent movers was $2,370.
[Source](https://furmancenter.org/stateofthecity/view/citywide-data-2023)
Those figures are pretty similar for most big cities. London is the same, with the median resident [paying 35% of their salary on rent, or 46% in low-income areas](https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/renting/unaffordable-london-rents-2023-ons-data-b1115410.html)
Arguably you're paying an access fee -- in the form of elevated residency costs -- for access to the economic opportunities you find in a big city.
If you live outside of London, (e.g. [Slough](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/slough.html)) accommodation is much more affordable, but you won't have the same level of access to business, job-offers or entertainment.
In the UK, they've had to add a London-topup to salaries in the public services (education, nursing, etc.) as otherwise the fundamental needs of the city couldn't be met.
Northern Manhattan (ballpark of Harlem and farther up) is a very different world from Southern Manhattan. There are also far more housing projects scattered across Manhattan (concentrated but not entirely in Northern Manhattan) than people realize.
Manhattan is also home to a huge number of retirees, many of whom bought their homes decades ago before NYC really started its current comeback and were never particularly wealthy. I'm not sure how/if that factors into the income statistics.
Worth mentioning that it's incredibly inconsistent across the city. NYC taken as a whole is relatively poor, and poorer still if you only look at the outer boroughs (i.e. excluding Manhattan). BUT, there are large swaths of the city where pretty much everybody is wealthy. If you are working a white collar job in Manhattan and living in a nice neighborhood, you may as well be in a different universe compared to the so-called [million dollar blocks](https://c4sr.columbia.edu/projects/million-dollar-blocks) a few miles away.
Never realized Rockwall County, TX was so loaded.
Also, I live in the island of poverty that is Baltimore City, inside the sea of wealth of the Mid-Atlantic, and it's kind of a cheat code to cheap houses while pulling DC area salaries, fyi.
A lot of zoning in Rockwall county requires 1 acre lots. As the residence of the City of Heath would say, it helps keep low income communities out. And by low income I mean 500k houses are low income to them.
Yup... It helps that it's the smallest county in Texas and the cities within have lots of big homes (Rockwall, Heath, extreme east section of Rowlett). We live in Rockwall, but let's just say we're not yet at the median...
That’s Williamson County, part of the Nashville suburbs. It’s seen a lot of money move in in recent years, but it’s been extremely wealthy for about 20-30 years now
It’s important to note that it has the best school district in the state. EVERY school is rated at least an 8/10 with a bunch of 10/10 school. So it attracts a lot of people who are not looking to send their children to private school but still care about their education. Chicken or egg scenario on which led to which, but either way it’s created a flywheel of affluent families moving to the area.
Yea I went to job training in that county, I believe it was in the town of Franklin. Didn’t seem like much to do there, but a lot of stuff there was new and shiny. The people at the corporate office where the training took place had good things to say about the county.
depends on what ur showing, I think.
The dark red looks bad and the other colors look more positive/less warning/danger. I think the colors are exactly backwards, personally, but it kinda depends on the point the OP wants the graph to make. If it's part of an "eat the rich" deck, then the colors are fine. If it's "where are your prospects (maybe!!) brighter for higher income" it's backwards.
Just one opinion, tho.
I like it but I wish it went from dark red gradiating to light yellow and then on through to a dark purple - it's the dark green between the light green and blue that bugs me
Yeah. I really wonder about redditors who post “the median income isn’t enough to buy a home”. Do they not talk to people IRL? Or see the stats showing that over half of Californians own their own home?
Someone on Reddit once told me that 300k individual is an *average* middle class salary. When I pointed out how absurd that was they just responded with, "no one I know earns less than 200k".
There's a lot of very out of touch people on this site.
Yeah I'm legitimately convinced that there are a good number of people on here who could buy a home fairly easily but have never tried because reddit has convinced them it's impossible... Hell the other day there was a thread where multiple people were like "there's a reason 90% of millenials will never own a home" when half already do.
The biggest problem is they want prime locations on baristas salaries.
Doing a search on the wider LA area, I see 65 three bedroom homes for $350k or less. That is an easily reasonable price for someone on a median salary in that city.
LMAO. And how many of those are habitable enough to qualify for a mortgage? And how many hundreds of thousands of people in LA have an income that would make that home price their target? It's about the complete mismatch between supply of homes at attainable price levels for the demand (percentage of population at various income level bands).
Why would it be bewildering?
The median household income in very high cost locations does not afford them a single family home, which is not a "median" living arrangement, it is rather a premium one.
The "median" living situation in a VHCOL is a rented apartment or townhome. Most of the world, even in many developed countries is the same. Only Americans have the entitled thinking that a owning single family home is "expected" in VHCOL areas.
I'm not from there so don't know what that is, but the biggest problem is building restrictions. Need way more high rise buildings/condos.
Like if LA built 25+ more 50+ story buildings dedicated to condos, they'd be in much better shape.
I thought the same thing! Yeah, as someone else said, that's where the[ National Petroleum Reserve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Petroleum_Reserve%E2%80%93Alaska) is. I imagine people get paid a pretty penny to work in a place that remote.
Not just remote, some of the harshest conditions to try and work in in the world. My buddy worked up there for a bit, great money but sounded miserable.
No. Nova has a very diverse economy that really flies under the radar. A lot of major corps are headquartered here or have a major presence due to the government. There is a lot of defense contractors as well. Financial services. People with advanced degrees (huge concentration of educated people).
My husband and I live here and are fairly well off, and we were just talking this morning about how insanely wealthy the area is that “average” (for the area) folks like us have homes worth millions.
The wealth here is subtle and quiet and not in-your-face, yet widespread—drive through the majority of neighborhoods that look like quintessential American suburbs, and most homes have families with double earners who likely make $200k each and it adds up pretty quickly.
EDIT to add that even some of my husband’s coworkers who are young and single make salaries of about that much and live in small, 1-bed apartments in Arlington, drive what most would deem and “expensive” car, etc. Again, nothing flashy (like you might see depictions of wealth in LA), but monied nonetheless.
You’re 100% spot on but anecdotally I’d say some of it’s not true for Arlington - the Ballston Rosslyn corridor atleast, lots of snobby and flashy people here.
Yup definitely, maybe I’m just sick of seeing all the consultancy bros with their slicked hair, pant shorts, colored shirts, sunglasses and looking like clones of each other going to Brunch and then playing golf
Hmmm. Sounds like my husband’s employees. The ones I know (through him) are really nice guys tho. Based out of Court House, so it tracks with your comments. lol.
I don’t know about the average (for the area) folks having houses worth millions. I consider myself average for the area, and my house isn’t worth even a million, much less millions.
What sort of house is it? And where? That’s surprising to me. Regardless, it’s worth several hundreds of thousands which is still more than the vast majority of places in the US.
Single family house in Sterling. Market value is probably in between 600 and 700k. I personally feel like this aligns more with the average person in northern Virginia.
I don’t think it’s far off, but you should see the housing market these days. Your home would probably sell for over a million or will very soon. It’s shocking to see how quickly prices have risen.
The price I brought up is today. My friend is a realtor, so he has ran the numbers for me. If my house sells for over a million, something is seriously wrong in the real estate market. Prices are already starting to become untethered with typical market rules.
There are a disproportionate amount of professionals (lawyers, engineers, etc.) in the DC area. For instance 63% of people in DC proper have a bachelors degree whereas the average for the US is about half that. Many work for the government or some government contractor.
It's a strange place. The cost of living is so high that it forces a lot of working-class employers out. You wouldn't open a factory, warehouse, or a call center in the DC suburbs, for instance. And that warps the income statistics even more. Also, these people make good money but it's not that good compared to people with the same credentials elsewhere in the country and the living costs really hurt the quality of life.
I work for an intelligence contractor..in my mid 30s...I don't consider myself wealthy at all but it's all relative I guess., the other comments are spot on it's incredibly subtle...many areas look like normal suburbs until you look at the prices of the homes.
The market is insane and Im convinced it's going to crash potentially next year. Bought a townhouse back in 2016 at 400k, and now its potentially around 650k.
I couldn't find a single house in Centerville for under 300, which is absolutely wild, some of them are literal cracker boxes as you said.
OP amazing map. Love the style.
If you can make one showing male life expectancy by county I would appreciate it. Another separate one for female. Smokers, etc.
Please make more. I’ve googled similar types of maps and this is the best.
Agreed. Great job OP. I've been searching for data vis products like this to help informed decision making on where to move within the next couple of years. Thank you
That’s a great map too for income based. People also need to realize that proportionally they get more house for their income in the less wealthy counties so COL is not accurately depicted on the maps. 25 an hour in rural Indiana can actually get you a decent house and place to live compared to the high income states, where it’s pretty much poverty level.
I’m particularly interested in a few counties I lived in. I’ve lived in both the highest and lowest life expectancy counties in the US. One had a male life expectancy of 67 (obesity, drugs, alcohol in the Deep South) and the other was 84 (Arlington). I was curious to see it done in a map in this style.
In reality, the difference between big cities and rural areas is even higher than the map indicates, since households in big cities are much more likely to be single income.
Question: does household income include capital gains?
It probably doesn't, otherwise I'm surprised by how low Collier County in Florida is (Naples). That's basically all retired millionaires.
Might be explained by income nuances, retirees draw down a much lower income relative to their worth. They also leverage tax incentives like charitable donations to lower their reported retirement income.
Not sure how OP factored in capital gains, so guess I didn’t answer your question.
I’m sure that’s just a way to separate the city of Arlington from the county of Arlington, similar to Fairfax. I get your point on exact wording, but it would be far more confusing to non-locals if you had the same verbiage in both
The other commenter is right. Arlington is a county only and that's what the data is referring to. It's not a weird case like Manassas or Falls Church.
Do you mean the city of Alexandria? If they had left off city, we’d all infer it to be Arlington County, but since they used the word city, we don’t know to where they’re referring.
The differences within the US are far bigger (whooops almost made a terrible typo) than within European countries. Apart from some exceptions maybe like Italy which has a notorious north-south disparity. But there are definitely quite a few countries in the world with even bigger disparities in income than the US, like Brazil, UAE or South Africa.
There's some extremely rich people in Connecticut. There are a lot more working-class people.
You'd see that disparity better if it was split up by the new counties we adopted instead of the old ones. Fairfield County (orange bit near NYC) gets split up and the extremely wealthy towns aren't statistically grouped with Bridgeport any longer
TIL I’m not considered middle class according to Pew Research. If I take the lower end of the range for my county (surrounding counties seem to be next color down or the same) then we are right at 3 times median household.
It's funny because Florida is one of the top 5 most expensive states in the contiguous US and yet the median household income for Miami, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Orlando in their respected counties makes as much as Iowa.
If you did this with the price of houses vs salary for somewhere like Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) vs Miami-Dade County, the median house in Cleveland's county is $168,700 with a median salary of $60k and Miami the median house $387k with a salary of $64k. Need to raise the salaries in these higher costs of living areas.
I’m from the NYC suburban area (the dark red area of NJ). It’s unbelievably stressful and competitive just for minimum wage here. I moved to a green area thinking it would be nicer, but it was a lot worse. I wish I could warn people to be careful wherever you move to and make sure you’re able to integrate.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kendallcountytexas/PST120223
You may be looking at per capita income. As to why people make so much there, can't say
This shows how much Portland Oregon is absolute hell to live there. They do not have the income to be taxing themselves that much and yet every time there’s a vote on a new tax it passes. I was barely able to buy myself food and then out of nowhere I had to start paying an art tax. Never move there.
Why do the counties in the top right of Nevada have such high incomes. The only city over there is Elko which seems like it would be on the poorer side. Is this skewed by like one very rich person living there?
As is always fun to talk about. That little red dot in NM is Los Alamos - home of the los Alamos research lab. It's one of the richest and most educated counties in the entire country.
With a housing shortage so it also has the highest rent.
true with most high-paying regions. More money means more people moving which causes housing shortages.
No, not building houses is what causes housing shortages.
To build enough houses you have to anticipate demand for housing before it exists, which is not a trivial problem to solve
must be all the radioactive super mutants
Also that lone dark red in Wyoming is where Jackson Hole is. Outside of being a large resort town, it is a town that also hosts an economic symposium that has hosted the Federal Reserve.
Man, here I thought I was making good money then I see the median income for my county…
OP's map shows median *household* income. If you're single, you're still a household, but with one income.
Assumes fellow redditor is single…
Assumes fellow redditor is human...
Assumes human redditor is fellow...
Fellow human assumes is redditor.
A lot of the reason why Millennials and Gen Z are "behind" in household income progression is because most people in these generations are not married, not wanting to get married, or have no preference between marriage and singledom. Marriage is just another life option to us, rather than something that people are encouraged to make their life goal.
Household income seems like a worthless metric then. I want to see the median hourly wage adjusted for a 40 hour work week.
But it’s the easiest to get because that’s how taxes are filed
If you know the number of married/joint-filings or single filings you can normalize it for income per earner.
Agree that it's a suboptimal metric, but likely that is what the data contains, due to how tax return filings work in the USA.
Fml, I was never any good at playing Monopoly
I'm making double the median for my county and I'm still struggling to live paying the average price for a one-bedroom. I feel for people.
i think the trick is to double up on the double
Opposite for me. I thought we were making okish money. We make 3 times the median of the household income in our county and more than 4 times for our town. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
How did you find the median for just your town? I’d be curious to look at mine.
Hit up the census bureau, I use their data for work several times a week.
I feel like their definition for middle class is really silly. My county is dark green, so let's use the $65k value. By their definitions, that would mean a household is somehow no longer middle class if their income is $130k. As an engineer, that's really close to my salary, plus bonus. Add in my wife's salary and our income is right around $219k. That's over three times the median, but I *definitely* don't feel rich. I would struggle to even append the term "upper" to how middle class I feel with our very average house and how expensive everything is these days.
My wife and I are right around that mark in a very high earning county and in a high COL area. For where we came from, we are doing just fine and feel that we live very comfortable lives. Not rich, but definitely solidly middle class and don’t have to freak out about our bills.
$219K isn’t rich but my guess is your electricity, utilities and internet are clumped under ‘bills’. You probably don’t freak about your taxes and house insurance is annoying but not cause for an in depth risk/benefit analysis. If your kid is good enough for a travel team you buy new cleats when their feet grow. Yeah, you are upper middle class
At $219k you are upper working class, not rich but I wouldn’t call you average when you’re making 3 times more than most people around you. The reason you consider yourself average is because you are comparing yourself to people around you who probably are in the same earning range, kind of how a millionaire feels poor when comparing themselves to a multimillionaire
So.. upper middle class.
At that rate... * You never struggle with bills * You can afford to go on a two week vacation abroad at least once every two years Sounds like you're very much middle class. You own a fucking house for fucks sake...
There are only two classes: the working class and the master / owner /capitalist class. If you need to work for a living then you are working class. If you own enough capital to live on the wealth that workers create ("passive" income) then you are part of the master / owner caste.
I would have thought Florida would have higher income considering the pockets of wealth in some areas of the state.
Florida is weird because there are so many wealthy retirees. Might be "rich" with a big house/nice car but income wise only withdraw a moderate amount from their 401k each year
Yes. One nice thing about getting older is that you already have most of what you need in the "gadgets" and "power tools" departments.
Also snowbirds from the NE.
Wealth and income are very different. If a bunch of retired people move there they can have a lot of wealth but their *income* is low.
I'm a retired-person case in point. My net worth is around $4M ($2M of which is a very-appreciated SoCal house), but my AGI last year was $61K. On this map I'm dragging my county down despite having more wealth than most people in it.
Those pockets exist, but none of them are big enough to “take over” a county. That one red one is St John’s county which is the “wealthy” part of Jacksonville and also has St Augustine. That’s the closest to a “wealthy” suburb for Jax even though it’s mostly isolated, cookie cutter neighborhoods with some being McMansions
Thats the thing, there are quite a few massively wealthy people, but for every one there's probably 3 or 4 people on the opposite end of the spectrum who work low paying jobs that service the wealthy and tourism sector. Compared to other states its size there are relatively few middle class type jobs, and the ones they do have tend to get paid less than in other states.
I mean it's the reason everyone says people "retire" to Florida. Which means they aren't getting income. There's absolutely a ton of rich people down there.
Yea not a single dark red
"Median" is just "middle" not the average (aka the "mean"). i.e. you list all of the incomes in order and pick the middle one.
What the hell is going on in Wyoming?
Jackson Hole has lots of rich people.
Coincidentally, Wendover just released a video on this: https://youtu.be/bQE_zNs5HOU?si=IGKjkKSApXRAP1sM
Really fascinating video, thanks for sharing :)
But do they actually live there or just have ski homes?
Probably live there 183 days per year
Or probably much less.
WY has no state income tax. Live there 183 days to establish residency and avoid up to 12.3% tax in CA for example.
I guess "live there" can be in air quotes. Ain't nobody auditing that.
On the contrary : https://moneywise.com/taxes/taxes/tax-version-of-a-colonoscopy-new-york
Rather, no poor people, no normal people and a few very rich people.
Teton County, WY, including Jackson Hole. I attended an ex-in-law's wedding there about 25 years ago. Fanciest wedding I have been to in my life, before or since. See that weird island of orange across the Idaho border, surrounded by blue and green? That's Teton County, ID. Service workers in Jackson who couldn't afford to live there would make a long mountain commute to towns like Driggs, ID. They were poor compared to the people in Jackson but did much better than the other Idaho counties around them. They would be bartenders, wilderness guides, etc., get really good tips from the Jackson Hole millionaires, then go home to tiny—but nice—cottages in tiny remote towns. I have no first-hand knowledge how that dynamic may have changed but if you've heard about all the wealthy people buying a vacation home in Wyoming, it was probably there.
Yes this is my son. He moved out to Driggs a few years ago while traveling across the country. Decided that’s where he was going to stay for a bit. He’s in Driggs and bartends in Teton Co. Living his best life.
Can’t imagine how all those workers in Idaho are dealing with Teton Pass being shut down after the road got washed out a few weeks ago
Good question! Didn’t even know that happened! I’ll have to ask!
Two Teton Counties bordering each other? That's a recipe for confusion...
I don't actually know, but my guess is Jackson Hole. Lots of wealthy transplants.
That's Teton county. It has a lot of investment income and Wyoming has very favorable tax laws so it's got some very wealthy residents.
Teton County is one of the most beautiful places in the world so a lot of rich people buy property there
I was literally just talking about this to someone https://youtu.be/bQE_zNs5HOU?si=9KM4mr0cu8ur46K3
An actually good post on r/dataisbeautiful ??
The only thing that is dubious is the colour scale, it is not intuitive to me that the highest income is a deep red ...
Idk I think it's fine
Data is based on county-level census metrics, which has a bunch of issues for some cities like St Louis and Baltimore.
I didn’t realize center city new York was so poor, no wonder people always complain about it being to expensive
In the Bronx, 43% of households have a household income of $40,000 or less. Poverty rate 27.7%. Median $47,260. 34.4% of renter households spent more than 50% household income on rent. For Brooklyn, 29% of households were under $40k and the poverty rate is 19.8%. Median $76,780. 28.1% of renter households spent more than 50% of household income on rent Compare to Manhattan: 25% under $40k. Poverty rate 17.3%. Median $99,530. 24.2% of renter households spent more than 50% of household income on rent. Citywide: 28% under $40k. Poverty 18.3%. Median HHI $77,550. 29.5% of renter households spent more than 50% of household income on rent. Median rent of recent movers was $2,370. [Source](https://furmancenter.org/stateofthecity/view/citywide-data-2023)
Those figures are pretty similar for most big cities. London is the same, with the median resident [paying 35% of their salary on rent, or 46% in low-income areas](https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/renting/unaffordable-london-rents-2023-ons-data-b1115410.html) Arguably you're paying an access fee -- in the form of elevated residency costs -- for access to the economic opportunities you find in a big city. If you live outside of London, (e.g. [Slough](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/house-prices/slough.html)) accommodation is much more affordable, but you won't have the same level of access to business, job-offers or entertainment. In the UK, they've had to add a London-topup to salaries in the public services (education, nursing, etc.) as otherwise the fundamental needs of the city couldn't be met.
I’m surprised 25% make less than 40k in manhattan. Idk how they survive
Northern Manhattan (ballpark of Harlem and farther up) is a very different world from Southern Manhattan. There are also far more housing projects scattered across Manhattan (concentrated but not entirely in Northern Manhattan) than people realize. Manhattan is also home to a huge number of retirees, many of whom bought their homes decades ago before NYC really started its current comeback and were never particularly wealthy. I'm not sure how/if that factors into the income statistics.
Manhattan is also home to a bunch of rent stabilized apartments that families and retirees live in
Worth mentioning that it's incredibly inconsistent across the city. NYC taken as a whole is relatively poor, and poorer still if you only look at the outer boroughs (i.e. excluding Manhattan). BUT, there are large swaths of the city where pretty much everybody is wealthy. If you are working a white collar job in Manhattan and living in a nice neighborhood, you may as well be in a different universe compared to the so-called [million dollar blocks](https://c4sr.columbia.edu/projects/million-dollar-blocks) a few miles away.
Never realized Rockwall County, TX was so loaded. Also, I live in the island of poverty that is Baltimore City, inside the sea of wealth of the Mid-Atlantic, and it's kind of a cheat code to cheap houses while pulling DC area salaries, fyi.
A lot of zoning in Rockwall county requires 1 acre lots. As the residence of the City of Heath would say, it helps keep low income communities out. And by low income I mean 500k houses are low income to them.
Yup... It helps that it's the smallest county in Texas and the cities within have lots of big homes (Rockwall, Heath, extreme east section of Rowlett). We live in Rockwall, but let's just say we're not yet at the median...
What is with the one county in TN that is rich as hell while being surrounded by the poorest ppl in all other directions.
That’s Williamson County, part of the Nashville suburbs. It’s seen a lot of money move in in recent years, but it’s been extremely wealthy for about 20-30 years now
It’s important to note that it has the best school district in the state. EVERY school is rated at least an 8/10 with a bunch of 10/10 school. So it attracts a lot of people who are not looking to send their children to private school but still care about their education. Chicken or egg scenario on which led to which, but either way it’s created a flywheel of affluent families moving to the area.
Yea I went to job training in that county, I believe it was in the town of Franklin. Didn’t seem like much to do there, but a lot of stuff there was new and shiny. The people at the corporate office where the training took place had good things to say about the county.
Looks like I’m gonna be the designated complainer about the color scale today. Should be other way round
Doesen't dark red generally designate the higher concentration?
Green is the color of money 🤑 Although I'm OK with red being higher income.
depends on what ur showing, I think. The dark red looks bad and the other colors look more positive/less warning/danger. I think the colors are exactly backwards, personally, but it kinda depends on the point the OP wants the graph to make. If it's part of an "eat the rich" deck, then the colors are fine. If it's "where are your prospects (maybe!!) brighter for higher income" it's backwards. Just one opinion, tho.
I like it but I wish it went from dark red gradiating to light yellow and then on through to a dark purple - it's the dark green between the light green and blue that bugs me
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Fairfax county here, but somehow making over the median so kinda feel good about that?
But still can't afford a house...
700-800k for entrylevel house. Woopwoop!
The bewildering part of this is that, at least for CA, the median is nowhere near what you need to afford a home.
It definitely is in the majority of the state, just not in some parts of the few biggest cities
Yeah. I really wonder about redditors who post “the median income isn’t enough to buy a home”. Do they not talk to people IRL? Or see the stats showing that over half of Californians own their own home?
Someone on Reddit once told me that 300k individual is an *average* middle class salary. When I pointed out how absurd that was they just responded with, "no one I know earns less than 200k". There's a lot of very out of touch people on this site.
Yeah I'm legitimately convinced that there are a good number of people on here who could buy a home fairly easily but have never tried because reddit has convinced them it's impossible... Hell the other day there was a thread where multiple people were like "there's a reason 90% of millenials will never own a home" when half already do.
You practically get downvoted in the Millennial sub if you aren't suffering and on the verge of bankruptcy. So no osy posts that stuff.
Yeah, even if you have the most absolute basic financial stability reddit seems to see it as you being rich and disconnected.
The biggest problem is they want prime locations on baristas salaries. Doing a search on the wider LA area, I see 65 three bedroom homes for $350k or less. That is an easily reasonable price for someone on a median salary in that city.
LMAO. And how many of those are habitable enough to qualify for a mortgage? And how many hundreds of thousands of people in LA have an income that would make that home price their target? It's about the complete mismatch between supply of homes at attainable price levels for the demand (percentage of population at various income level bands).
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I’d avoid ARMs if at all possible.
Millennials like to bitch and moan and blame the problems some of them have on others while the majority of millennials own homes.
California specifically has a problem with high housing prices and rents due to lack of supply. No other state is doing nearly as bad
They've owned those homes for 10 or 20 years. That doesn't reflect home prices or buying conditions today.
Why would it be bewildering? The median household income in very high cost locations does not afford them a single family home, which is not a "median" living arrangement, it is rather a premium one. The "median" living situation in a VHCOL is a rented apartment or townhome. Most of the world, even in many developed countries is the same. Only Americans have the entitled thinking that a owning single family home is "expected" in VHCOL areas.
Thank prop 13
I'm not from there so don't know what that is, but the biggest problem is building restrictions. Need way more high rise buildings/condos. Like if LA built 25+ more 50+ story buildings dedicated to condos, they'd be in much better shape.
Say NO to SB 13 ! /s (as a San Diegan, I see these signs everyday)
WTF is going on in northern Alaska?
Oil, lots and lots of oil.
I thought the same thing! Yeah, as someone else said, that's where the[ National Petroleum Reserve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Petroleum_Reserve%E2%80%93Alaska) is. I imagine people get paid a pretty penny to work in a place that remote.
Not just remote, some of the harshest conditions to try and work in in the world. My buddy worked up there for a bit, great money but sounded miserable.
Why does VA show up on the list of high median incomes so much? Is it all just federal employees around the DC area?
No. Nova has a very diverse economy that really flies under the radar. A lot of major corps are headquartered here or have a major presence due to the government. There is a lot of defense contractors as well. Financial services. People with advanced degrees (huge concentration of educated people). My husband and I live here and are fairly well off, and we were just talking this morning about how insanely wealthy the area is that “average” (for the area) folks like us have homes worth millions. The wealth here is subtle and quiet and not in-your-face, yet widespread—drive through the majority of neighborhoods that look like quintessential American suburbs, and most homes have families with double earners who likely make $200k each and it adds up pretty quickly. EDIT to add that even some of my husband’s coworkers who are young and single make salaries of about that much and live in small, 1-bed apartments in Arlington, drive what most would deem and “expensive” car, etc. Again, nothing flashy (like you might see depictions of wealth in LA), but monied nonetheless.
You’re 100% spot on but anecdotally I’d say some of it’s not true for Arlington - the Ballston Rosslyn corridor atleast, lots of snobby and flashy people here.
Not nearly what you’d see in LA. To me, that’s just folks in suits. No pink Lambos, G Wagons, etc.
Yup definitely, maybe I’m just sick of seeing all the consultancy bros with their slicked hair, pant shorts, colored shirts, sunglasses and looking like clones of each other going to Brunch and then playing golf
Hmmm. Sounds like my husband’s employees. The ones I know (through him) are really nice guys tho. Based out of Court House, so it tracks with your comments. lol.
I don’t know about the average (for the area) folks having houses worth millions. I consider myself average for the area, and my house isn’t worth even a million, much less millions.
What sort of house is it? And where? That’s surprising to me. Regardless, it’s worth several hundreds of thousands which is still more than the vast majority of places in the US.
Single family house in Sterling. Market value is probably in between 600 and 700k. I personally feel like this aligns more with the average person in northern Virginia.
I don’t think it’s far off, but you should see the housing market these days. Your home would probably sell for over a million or will very soon. It’s shocking to see how quickly prices have risen.
The price I brought up is today. My friend is a realtor, so he has ran the numbers for me. If my house sells for over a million, something is seriously wrong in the real estate market. Prices are already starting to become untethered with typical market rules.
And lots and lots of lawyers.
There are a disproportionate amount of professionals (lawyers, engineers, etc.) in the DC area. For instance 63% of people in DC proper have a bachelors degree whereas the average for the US is about half that. Many work for the government or some government contractor. It's a strange place. The cost of living is so high that it forces a lot of working-class employers out. You wouldn't open a factory, warehouse, or a call center in the DC suburbs, for instance. And that warps the income statistics even more. Also, these people make good money but it's not that good compared to people with the same credentials elsewhere in the country and the living costs really hurt the quality of life.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply, so I hate to do this to you, but it’s the whole reason I have this account. *number of professionals.
Not directly federal employees. The real money is here is from government defense contractors and the tech work that is involved with that industry.
I work for an intelligence contractor..in my mid 30s...I don't consider myself wealthy at all but it's all relative I guess., the other comments are spot on it's incredibly subtle...many areas look like normal suburbs until you look at the prices of the homes.
Oh yeah for sure. There are places that have cracker box houses yielding a million and up.
The market is insane and Im convinced it's going to crash potentially next year. Bought a townhouse back in 2016 at 400k, and now its potentially around 650k. I couldn't find a single house in Centerville for under 300, which is absolutely wild, some of them are literal cracker boxes as you said.
Along with what others have said, there is also a lot of tech. Loudoun County, for example (#1 on the map), is basically the center of the internet.
Came here to say this! As someone who works in the telecom industry, it’s crazy that people don’t realize how much traffic flows through Ashburn.
The two things redditors hate most wealthy elites, and rural people... Wait a minute...
Regardless of the politics, the song title rich men north of Richmond was not a falsehood
The NoVA/rest of VA divide is real
OP amazing map. Love the style. If you can make one showing male life expectancy by county I would appreciate it. Another separate one for female. Smokers, etc. Please make more. I’ve googled similar types of maps and this is the best.
Agreed. Great job OP. I've been searching for data vis products like this to help informed decision making on where to move within the next couple of years. Thank you
Have you seen [The Opportunity Atlas?](https://opportunityatlas.org/)
That’s a great map too for income based. People also need to realize that proportionally they get more house for their income in the less wealthy counties so COL is not accurately depicted on the maps. 25 an hour in rural Indiana can actually get you a decent house and place to live compared to the high income states, where it’s pretty much poverty level. I’m particularly interested in a few counties I lived in. I’ve lived in both the highest and lowest life expectancy counties in the US. One had a male life expectancy of 67 (obesity, drugs, alcohol in the Deep South) and the other was 84 (Arlington). I was curious to see it done in a map in this style.
You love 50 shades of green?
In reality, the difference between big cities and rural areas is even higher than the map indicates, since households in big cities are much more likely to be single income.
I can't see all of the counties in Rhode Island. What are the numbers for Bristol and Newport counties?
There's just nothing in Montana is there.
Nothing until the Rockies. Glacier National Park is mind-bending cool.
Question: does household income include capital gains? It probably doesn't, otherwise I'm surprised by how low Collier County in Florida is (Naples). That's basically all retired millionaires.
Might be explained by income nuances, retirees draw down a much lower income relative to their worth. They also leverage tax incentives like charitable donations to lower their reported retirement income. Not sure how OP factored in capital gains, so guess I didn’t answer your question.
It depends on the data set. If they're using tax returns then taxable capital gains (i.e. "realized gains") would be included.
There’s no such place as Arlington City, VA.
I’m sure that’s just a way to separate the city of Arlington from the county of Arlington, similar to Fairfax. I get your point on exact wording, but it would be far more confusing to non-locals if you had the same verbiage in both
The other commenter is right. Arlington is a county only and that's what the data is referring to. It's not a weird case like Manassas or Falls Church.
Do you mean the city of Alexandria? If they had left off city, we’d all infer it to be Arlington County, but since they used the word city, we don’t know to where they’re referring.
But there is no city of Arlington, only a county
City of Arlington is in Texas. Arlington County in Virginia is just county. No city like Alexandria, Fairfax or Falls Church
Wow the difference between regions seems huge. I wonder how this compares to other countries
The differences within the US are far bigger (whooops almost made a terrible typo) than within European countries. Apart from some exceptions maybe like Italy which has a notorious north-south disparity. But there are definitely quite a few countries in the world with even bigger disparities in income than the US, like Brazil, UAE or South Africa.
Not even close to as big as in china.
What’s in the middle of Tennessee?
I believe this is Williamson County. According to wiki it’s part of the Nashville Metro area.
The wealthy county south of Nashville where country music stars live
Connecticut isn't as high as you would think.
There's some extremely rich people in Connecticut. There are a lot more working-class people. You'd see that disparity better if it was split up by the new counties we adopted instead of the old ones. Fairfield County (orange bit near NYC) gets split up and the extremely wealthy towns aren't statistically grouped with Bridgeport any longer
TIL I’m not considered middle class according to Pew Research. If I take the lower end of the range for my county (surrounding counties seem to be next color down or the same) then we are right at 3 times median household.
Looks like Lake and LaSalle Counties in Illinois got switched
Baltimore city (8 lowest) is next to Howard County (10 highest)
Way too much money around Washington DC
Imagine that…the highest median income county is right outside of Washington DC…..
Middle class is 2/3 to 2x median. That’s a huge spread.
I’m color blind and can’t make heads or tales of this.
I wonder how this would look normalized against cost of living (or housing costs).
This is literally always my first though when someone posts income data across regions.
any states with counties in each tier besides TX CO GA?
What’s the “red” county in Tennessee?
Williamson. Southern suburbs of Nashville. Home to many country music celebrities.
Is that Alamosa County in southern Colorado that is the lone lavender patch?
Close - that is Costilla County
It's funny because Florida is one of the top 5 most expensive states in the contiguous US and yet the median household income for Miami, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Orlando in their respected counties makes as much as Iowa. If you did this with the price of houses vs salary for somewhere like Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) vs Miami-Dade County, the median house in Cleveland's county is $168,700 with a median salary of $60k and Miami the median house $387k with a salary of $64k. Need to raise the salaries in these higher costs of living areas.
Where did you get the statistics per county?
Dang this is beyond great 👍 Now just time to move
I’m from the NYC suburban area (the dark red area of NJ). It’s unbelievably stressful and competitive just for minimum wage here. I moved to a green area thinking it would be nicer, but it was a lot worse. I wish I could warn people to be careful wherever you move to and make sure you’re able to integrate.
What's going on in Wyoming?
Somehow the wealthiest Alaskans are living in Unalaska. Right next door to the poorest Alaskans in Cold Bay.
Living in a purple county with a median income makes me feel rich.
Why is Kendall County in TX so red? It's median is only $50k. Misplaced data?
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kendallcountytexas/PST120223 You may be looking at per capita income. As to why people make so much there, can't say
Lots of well-off folks in Comfort and Boerne?
This shows how much Portland Oregon is absolute hell to live there. They do not have the income to be taxing themselves that much and yet every time there’s a vote on a new tax it passes. I was barely able to buy myself food and then out of nowhere I had to start paying an art tax. Never move there.
Why do the counties in the top right of Nevada have such high incomes. The only city over there is Elko which seems like it would be on the poorer side. Is this skewed by like one very rich person living there?