Ranking the 50 US States by Median Household Income

The full picture: cost of living, geography, and industry mix

Median household income varies by nearly $53,000 between the highest-ranked and lowest-ranked state — a gap driven by cost of living, industry mix, and geography, not just "who works harder." A $70,000 income in rural Mississippi and a $70,000 income in the DC suburbs buy very different lives.

All figures below are median household income from the Census Bureau's ACS 2020–2024 5-Year Estimates (table B19013) — the same data every state page on this site uses.

A word on what "median household income" means before the tables, because it changes how you should read them. These are household figures: everyone in the home, combined, from every source of income — not one person's salary. States with more dual-earner households will rank higher partly for that reason alone, independent of what any individual job pays there. The national median across every household is $80,734.

Top 10 states (plus D.C.)

Washington, D.C. isn't a state, but the Census Bureau publishes it alongside the 50 states, so it's included here the same way.

The middle of the pack

The extremes get all the attention, but most states aren't near either end. Here's the middle of the ranking, where the gaps between neighbours shrink to a few hundred dollars:

Thirteen states are separated by about $6,100 here — roughly the same as the single gap between first-ranked D.C. and second-ranked Massachusetts at the top of the table. Once you're outside the top and bottom handful, a state's rank is close to meaningless as a description of daily life; the difference between rank 24 and rank 31 is statistical noise compared to the difference between two counties inside either one.

Notice too that most of this middle band sits below the national median of $80,734. That isn't a contradiction — the national figure is a median over households, not over states, and the most populous high-income states pull it upward. See what's the average US salary for how that number is built.

Bottom 10 states

A state median hides more than it shows

The single biggest limitation of any state ranking is that states are not economically uniform. Virginia's median household income is $93,170, which puts it comfortably in the upper half of the table. But Loudoun County, inside that same state, has a median of $181,765 — nearly double the state figure, and higher than any state's median on this page.

That pattern repeats everywhere. A state's number is an average over metropolitan counties, suburban counties, and rural ones with completely different labour markets. Ranking 15th or 40th tells you very little about what a specific county looks like, which is why every state page here drills down county by county rather than stopping at the state line.

The same is true at the top of the distribution. The share of households earning $200,000 or more ranges from 5.8% in Mississippi to 26.7% in D.C. — a spread far wider than the medians alone suggest. What income puts you in the top 1% breaks that down state by state.

What this ranking doesn't tell you

A high rank doesn't automatically mean "better off" — it doesn't account for state or local taxes, or how far that income actually goes locally. A household earning the median in a high-ranked state can still feel squeezed once rent and childcare are priced in.

That caveat deserves more weight than it usually gets. Housing costs, state income tax rules, and childcare prices all vary by geography in ways that income rankings simply don't capture — a top-10 state can be a harder place to get ahead than a bottom-10 one, depending entirely on what you spend. Why a high income doesn't always mean you're ahead walks through how far apart those two things can drift.

For the exact number and national percentile for any specific state, visit its own page — every one of the 50 states (plus D.C.) has its own median income, top-earner thresholds, and county-by-county breakdown.

To see how your own income ranks against your state, your county, and the country all at once, run it through the calculator.